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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29989341">The Fine Art Of A Spider's Web</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeLeeAngelis/pseuds/ZoeLeeAngelis'>ZoeLeeAngelis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath of Torture, Angst, BAMF Peter Parker, Blood and Violence, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Deaf Clint Barton, Depressed Peter Parker, F/F, F/M, Gen, Genius Peter Parker, Heavy Angst, Hurt Peter Parker, Hydra Peter Parker, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury Recovery, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath &amp; Recovery, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Peter Parker Needs a Break, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Peter Parker has ADHD, Peter Parker has PTSD, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Peter Parker is a Mess, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Slow Burn, Soul Stone (Marvel), The Team Needs a Hug, Tired Peter Parker, Whump</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:21:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>38,683</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29989341</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeLeeAngelis/pseuds/ZoeLeeAngelis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There wasn't much to remember. Peter was raised by Hydra in pain and mental anguish.</p><p>And then one day, he was just angry and tired of everything.</p><p>Or</p><p>A take on the Hydra Peter Parker tag and how Grief affects someone's life.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Betty Brant/Ned Leeds, Bruce Banner/Thor, Cassie Lang &amp; Peter Parker, Cassie Lang/Amy Bendix, Everett Ross/Stephen Strange, Fandral/Loki (Marvel), Happy Hogan/May Parker (Spider-Man), Harley Keener &amp; Peter Parker, Harley Keener/Harry Osborn, Helen Cho/Sif (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, Michelle Jones &amp; Ned Leeds &amp; Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Shuri, Nebula/James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Pepper Potts/Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker &amp; Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker &amp; Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker &amp; Pepper Potts, Peter Parker &amp; Steve Rogers, Peter Parker &amp; Tony Stark, Peter Parker/Wade Wilson, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Yelena Belova/Ava Starr</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>217</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. “Я готов отвечать.(Ready to comply.)”</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>*Me, looking back at everything I ever tried to write on Hydra Peter Parker but never got the right idea until now.*</p><p>"Well, that was a long journey."</p><p>*Immediatly falls asleep.*</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <i>“He turned away, and suddenly she thought about the old children's story, where the stupid girl opens the box that God gave her, and all the evils of the world fly out, except Hope, which stays at the bottom; and she wondered what Hope was doing in there in the first place, in with all the bad things. Then the answer came to her, and she wondered how she could've been so stupid. Hope was in there because it was evil too, probably the worst of them all, so heavy with malice and pain that it couldn't drag itself out of the opened box.”</i>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Everything was always so fucking hard, and <i>life couldn’t give him a break.</i></p><p>In between all experiments being done to his body every day and training without stopping, the only time he had he would look into the abyss and <i>hope</i> that something would look back.</p><p>Pyotr felt like he carried hope on his back for too long, so long he doesn’t know how to break free from it. Hope things would turn out ok, hope in the end he could be in peace with himself about everything.</p><p>Sometimes, sometimes he could feel his muscles straining and cutting themselves under his skin. They would break and reconstruct themselves. His bones would break into a million pieces before being put back together. His mind would melt itself under the electric current over his head's skin and would put itself back together so they could continue like nothing had happened.</p><p>The vicious cicle of torture, experiments and training would drain him from all the energy he had, every last drop of it. And when he finally passed out, he would be thrown in his cell and it would restart when he woke up again.</p><p>He would hear the whispers, the talks, the hearts. Everything was always so loud, but he got used to it. He would repeat to himself <i>I’m used to it</i> as many times he felt like he needed, every single minute, hour, day, just so he could continue.</p><p>Pretending everything was fine was practically one of his surnames by that point.</p><p>It's not like he could do something. There wasn’t anything for him to do besides follow orders.</p><p>Much of his time he would spend as a spectator, a spectator on his own body. He didn’t have control when he could walk, jump, he couldn’t control his body when he was running after people and pulling the trigger of the guns they would put in his hands, time after time, killing everyone who interfered with the missions they would give him.</p><p>He couldn’t feel emotions, he wasn’t even sure what that was in the first place. Pyotr remembers being punished more than one time when he cried. He remembered them putting him inside a freezer and he would lose track of time.</p><p>Pyotr.</p><p>He couldn’t even feel an ounce of resemblance with that name, but they would only call him that. It was either Pyotr or Spider, and he couldn’t even point out which one was the worst. Probably Spider since they would only call him that when he was being a spectator.</p><p>But he was used to it. He was used to being called names that weren’t his own.</p><p>He was alone in the world. There wasn’t anyone there to defend him, and he didn’t have the energy to do it himself. If he hadn’t passed out, he was forcing his body to train, harder, harder and harder. There was never an in-between.</p><p>Pyotr always felt his body hitting the floor before he could only see darkness. Darkness so dark he wished there was someone in the middle of that darkness just to stare back at him and throw more hope on his back, just a kilogram heavier so he could feel something and hurt more when he came back and saw his handler staring down at him, saying how disappointed she was in him.</p><p>And then there were the words. Words he couldn’t understand, or understood too much but couldn’t grasp them.</p><p>
  <i>Love.</i>
</p><p>He didn’t even know the meaning of the word, but he knew it was something to hate. It was probably something he couldn't even understand, so he was ok with it.</p><p>
  <i>Life.</i>
</p><p>What was life if not something he couldn’t even grasp the concept of.</p><p>And then family.</p><p>
  <i>Family.</i>
</p><p>That was probably the worst of the worst.</p><p>His handler would say from time to time how they were like family. He heard some guards commenting, more than once, that <i>this place was like a family</i> to them.</p><p>He had the slightest idea that family wouldn’t hurt him, family wouldn’t break his bones in half just to watch them glue themselves back together. So he didn’t have a family. And not having family only confirmed to him how alone he was.</p><p>He didn’t want to have a family if they would always hurt him. He didn’t want anything to do with a family when he knew that he was just a weapon, one more to add to people's arcenals if they had him.</p><p>Pyotr had the hope of one day meeting a family, a proper one, just so he could see what went wrong in his life before he passed out and the darkness called for him again.</p><p>He couldn’t even say he slept because it wasn’t something he did.</p><p>And even after everything, his life could be described as being just a big pile of rubble. A very unstable pile that could fall if you moved. It wasn’t a struggle, he would just go with the flow of everything like the sea did.</p><p>He knew that, by that point, it didn’t matter if he still tried to <i>do his best</i> – something he had in his head that he should always do for some reason –, in the end of the day, he would be punished for other people's mistakes.</p><p>Probably one of the most vivid memories he had was when the base he lives in received the news about the fall of the Winter Soldier. He couldn’t understand very clearly the concept of everything that had happened, but he knew that the Winter Soldier was a very important asset Hydra had in hands.</p><p>That day, his handler thought that the best way to teach Pyotr the lesson of never trying to run away was to put him into the freezer, and just leave him there. He had no idea how many hours or days he passed inside the thing, he lost track of time the second he went inside.</p><p>The only detail he could remember was hearing one of the scientists saying they were going to put the number of hours in their reports so they could see if being in the freezer for too long of a period had any effects on Pyotr.</p><p>And he was scared after that. He already knew he didn’t have any type of choice making in the position he was, being just one more asset, but being almost forgotten in the freezer and then being brought to the chair not even a few hours later scared him. He didn’t want that to happen again, but he knew it could happen.</p><p>Pyotr had no choice besides <i>do his best</i> and ask the universe to not fuck him up more than he already was.</p><p>He could feel the hope weighing down on him, day after day. And his biggest dream was that he would finally be crushed by all of the hope he carried.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Pyotr opened his eyes, quietly. He couldn’t even move his body without feeling the pain flaring up.</p><p>They had broken both of his arms at some point before he passed out, but he had no idea how much time had passed already. He could feel that both of his arm bones were ok already, but his muscles on the other side were like they were being burned under fire in that moment.</p><p>He sensed the presence of someone come near him, and soon enough there was someone in his vision field.</p><p>“Последний день тренировок прошел очень хорошо, но Паук нам нужен сейчас.(The last day of training went really well, but we need Spider now.)” His handler gave him a smile, an evil one, and Pyotr still couldn’t move himself without feeling even more pain.</p><p>But he knew that was going to change in less than a few minutes. It always did.</p><p>She wanted Spider, and Pyotr was just on the way.</p><p>He would still feel all of the pain, but he would be sent to the back, like always. He wanted to cry, he wanted to just let the tears fall from his eyes, but he was stronger than that. He didn’t want to go to the freezer, so he just didn’t move.</p><p>“Роза(Rose),...” The woman started.</p><p>He felt the memories trying to sip in into his vision, but he held them back. He didn’t want to see them, not now. He would never feel like he was ready enough to just see everything his mind kept further in the back, on the corner he turned his back to, the corner he didn’t have time to unpack.</p><p>“Десять(Ten),...” She continued.</p><p>Pyotr could feel his body starting to contort, his back starting to arch outwards. His pain started to increase, and there wasn’t anything he could do. He concentrated all the remaining strength he had into pushing memories away, making them stay in the boxes they needed to stay.</p><p>“Чернить(Black),...”</p><p>There were memories in his mind that weren’t his, memories he collected through the years. But were his the ones he couldn’t bear to see. He couldn’t bear to see people dying in front of his eyes, he couldn’t bear to see things that could’ve been avoided if he had strength to just stop.</p><p>“Самолет(Plane),...”</p><p>He screamed. He couldn’t hear himself screaming, but he knew he was screaming. His hands were grabbing his own hair and he screamed, loud.</p><p>“Красный(Red),...”</p><p>His body fell on the floor. He started to punch the cement with his fisted hands. He didn’t have control over his own body, but he knew that Spider could also feel the pain in that moment.</p><p>“Мать(Mother),...”</p><p>He screamed louder on that one. Pyotr could feel the blood in his hands, but he didn’t stop punching the floor. Spider got him to stop and took full control, stand up right before the last word was pronounced.</p><p>“Зима(Winter).”</p><p>Everything stopped.</p><p>The body was up, but it’s eyes weren’t turned to the handler. Spider kept his eyes down, and Pyotr was numb in the corner he was pushed to. It wasn’t that he wasn’t feeling the pain anymore, it was just… <i>he was used to it.</i></p><p>“Паук?(Spider?)” The woman asked.</p><p>And “Я готов отвечать.(Ready to comply.)” was the only thing Spider said.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Spider moved along with the other agents. He would only listen in to what the other agents would say and tune out again.</p><p>He was there to do his mission, do everything he needed to do before Pyotr could take back control.</p><p>Spider felt bad sometimes, on how they programmed him to not feel pain and just let Pyotr feel everything, on how Pyotr agreed to that. But in moments like this, throwing himself from the second floor of a building, it was the best that he couldn’t feel the pain.</p><p>He continued his way outside, running after the man that was trying to escape. But he was faster than the man. It only took him a few seconds to catch him and break his neck, Spider making sure to let his uncovered wrist brush against the man's skin before he let go of the lifeless body.</p><p>He took a deep breath and turned around, going back to where the other agents were.</p><p>Spider always had the thought that he could just kill all of them and run away, but trying to run like the Winter Soldier did would only get him killed. <i>He was just an asset after all.</i></p><p>And he <i>knew</i> that Pyotr couldn't move the body himself because of the pain, he knew how much it hurt for him to even try to move. So if he ran, he would need to find someone to take care of them after he passes out and Pyotr gets the control back.</p><p>But there wasn't anyone he could trust, and that was probably the only problem he had in this whole situation. He had no friends, no family, and he lived in pain.</p><p>There was no solution to his problem. He could only do like Pyotr and hope until the day he dies.</p><p>The agents were talking about something he determined wasn't important for the mission, so he kept his eyes around.</p><p>It was a normal place, one that he knew there weren't any hiding spots behind walls and all of that. But there was someone still alive by what his ears were picking up.</p><p>He got away from the group, climbed up the wall and entered one of the windows by the third floor, moving in silence through the badly lighted room.</p><p>Spider followed the heartbeat he was hearing, finding a child hiding under a table that was covered in a tablecloth.</p><p>He made a silence movement in front of the mask that covered half of his face for the child before they could say something or even scream, so Spider was appraising his options for a second.</p><p>His mission was to kill everyone in the way of his mission, but he knew <i>this</i> wasn't part of it anymore.</p><p>Spider took off one of his gloves and extended the gloveless hand to the child, who grabbed his hand seemingly without even thinking twice.</p><p>He took a deep breath before pulling the child and, in silence, he guided them to the entrance and let them go, making a sign for them to go in silence.</p><p>Spider only observed for a few seconds while the child disappeared in the night before he turned around and found the body he originally heard before, a person still alive, and breathing.</p><p>He grabbed the gun from his waist holster, took the safety off and shot the man in the head. The sound of it echoed through the floor, and he didn't care much about it.</p><p>He grabbed the body and dragged it till he was back in the window he entered through and just threw the body down.</p><p>As he arrived back on the ground floor, through the same way he went up, the other agents were looking at him.</p><p>And as always, Spider just didn't say anything while he went on the way they left the vehicles hiding.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Cold. It was cold.</p><p><i>But he was used to it.</i> It wasn't his first rodeo.</p><p>Pyotr was in the freezer again. It seemed fun and games until they closed the door, and he was left alone in the dark and cold place.</p><p>Lonely was also one of his surnames by this point. There wasn't much he could do without someone in there with him, and he didn't have family and friends.</p><p>It wasn't like he properly understood both of those words, but he tried from time to time.</p><p>The only good thing about the freezer was that it soothed Pyotr's pain. Yes, he was almost freezing in the place, but it was better to feel the cold than the pain.</p><p>He had been there so many times in his life that his body learned to use the cold in his advantage. It would pull the cold to stop the pain and would make him be in a position where he could stop to think, think about anything he wanted to.</p><p>And in that moment he was trying in the long run, he got used to the cold.</p><p>Pyotr pretended he was cold, and at some point he would actually pass out, but he would mostly pass out because he was tired instead of being cold. He just wanted to be left alone in there, the only moment he wouldn’t be bothered by anyone.</p><p>During that time, he could feel Spider rummaging through. There were times where he would hallucinate him in front of him, and they would just look at each other.</p><p>He had an idea that hallucinating was maybe a bad thing, but it was just a moment where he would have someone that he knew that was looking over for him, and he just wanted that for so long that he wouldn’t comment with anyone about that.</p><p>It wasn’t like anyone listened to him anyways.</p><p>He lost track of time pretty easily and wasn’t so sure how much time he had been there already. Spider was sitting on the other side of the room, the two exchanging eye contact. At some point, Spider got up from where he was and stopped in front of Pyotr, crouching down.</p><p>Both of them took a deep breath and Pyotr was engulfed in darkness.</p><p>[...]</p><p>One more. One more mission.</p><p>He already had an idea that Pyotr would be punished after this. Someone fucked up and he knew Pyotr would receive all of the fault for it.</p><p>He continued. He continued because there was nothing he could do against that.</p><p>But he was... feeling something. He never really felt anything, and Spider was confused. He could feel Pyotr's confusion also, but he just continued.</p><p>He didn't want Pyotr to be punished.</p><p>Spider pulled the trigger and shot the man in front of him dead.</p><p>He didn't want Pyotr to be punished.</p><p>Someone made a mistake, Pyotr would receive the fault and Spider could only feel something boiling inside him.</p><p>He entered the driver's side of the car and turned the vehicle on, the other agents entering right after him and he took off from there.</p><p>He swerved the vehicle in between the traffic, not too dense but enough to be an annoyance. Spider knew there was someone already following him. He had to make it to the helicopter that was waiting for them.</p><p>Spider looked in the rear view mirror, seeing the black car coming right after them. He made it into another street and the car continued coming behind them.</p><p>He saw in the distance other cars starting to also follow them, and he could fathom what that boiling was.</p><p>It was <i>anger.</i> Spider was <i>angry,</i> Pyotr was <i>angry.</i></p><p>How could he let everything go so far like this? He should've killed himself a long time ago to just finish with everything, but now he just wanted to kill the other agents for everything.</p><p>Spider did a 180 with the car when he saw the barricade forming just a little more in front, passing right in the middle of the two cars that were behind, following him, and he went back from where he came.</p><p>He put his foot on the gas, making curves in too high speeds. He followed to the helicopter point, already feeling like his anger was only rising with each minute that passed.</p><p>As he made the last curve, he saw the helicopter in the distance, but it wasn't on the ground anymore. It had already started to take flight, and Spider's anger only rose to a point way past the boiling one.</p><p>He could hear the other agents saying something, but he didn't care. It didn't matter if he got inside that helicopter or not, he would be punished either way and he was angry.</p><p><i>Angry</i> and <i>tired.</i></p><p>Angry and tired of receiving other people's punishments.</p><p>He pulled out the gun from his holster and just shot the three agents in the head before they could react and try to shoot him. If he was going to act in anger now, he was going full into it.</p><p>Spider stopped the car as near to the helicopter as he could, which meant right under it. Someone threw down a ladder, but he was sure he wasn’t going up.</p><p>He was <i>angry</i> for letting everything go so far as it did.</p><p>He was <i>tired,</i> he just wanted to lay down and sleep for an undefined time. <i>A proper sleep, at last.</i></p><p>Spider got out of the car, running a little far but just enough to get all the people inside the helicopter in line and he just shot all of them, fast, clean.</p><p>The helicopter lost control pretty fast and fell to the ground, right on top of the car underneath it.</p><p>Spider walked away, seeing the cars that were following them coming their way to where he was, but he didn’t care. Maybe they had a better way of making him live his life, maybe they could freeze him on cryo like Hydra used to do with the Winter Soldier, or maybe just kill him.</p><p>
  <i>Being dead didn’t seem to be a bad thing at that moment.</i>
</p><p>As the two vehicles exploded, he was caught in the wave and thrown to the ground, rolling on the asphalt. He felt blood dripping from his ears and he could hear a ringing of static while he felt his consciousness slipping.</p><p>The gun, before in his hand, has been thrown away pretty far for him to even think about getting it back. He couldn’t even think properly in the moment, if he was being sincere, and a gun in his heand would do more harm than good.</p><p>It was probably the first time that Spider properly felt pain without being in one of the moments he and Pyotr were changing places, and not being able to hear sucked.</p><p>He could feel people walking on the asphalt, but by the point they got more near to where his body was laying in the ground, he had already gone away for the day.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading.<br/>This story is still fresh in my mind since I literally threw away *cof cof* archived *cof cof* more than 20.000 words that I previously had on old takes I was trying on the whole Peter Parker was raised by Hydra think. The problem was that none of them brought as much anguish as I wanted so I just stopped them and re-started everything.<br/>I'll do my best to keep updating.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. “Порох,(Gunpowder,)”</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning: someone feeling pain, quite a lot of it.</p><p>"Get in loser, we're going to therapy!"</p><p>*Speeds away.*</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Trying to open his eyes seemed to be the biggest battle he ever fought with his body. He was tired, and he could feel restraints on his pulses and legs, holding him down.</p><p>He couldn’t hear anything and he felt overwhelmed by his senses.</p><p>Pyotr squirmed a little, not feeling the usual pain in his muscles. It was still there, of course, but it had reduced so much that he took a deep breath and sighed when he didn’t feel pain by doing the action.</p><p>He tried opening his eyes again, succeeding on the action but immediately regretting it when the blaring lights came to his eyes and he felt the pain on his body restarting. He tried taking a deep breath again but whimpered when he felt the pain coming instead.</p><p>He did try to get out of the restraints. The feeling of them on his pulses and lower leg was uncomfortable on his skin. He felt like they were burning him just like the feeling of the cloth that was covering his body was doing.</p><p>Pyotr didn’t let any tears fall. He wasn’t going to do that. He didn’t know who had custody of him, and he wasn’t ready to play the game of <i>how to live a life not being under Hydra’s control.</i></p><p>He felt hands coming for his skin, and before he was even prepared his mind was being filled with memories, memories that weren’t his, memories that pushed the one's he had by the front to the back and locked them. He screamed in pain, it was too much for him. Pyotr could only scream before he felt his mind slipping under again.</p><p>[...]</p><p>The air seemed lighter when he came over again.</p><p>Pyotr felt he had more energy in his body now than he ever felt in his existence.</p><p>Opening his eyes was an easy task compared to the first time. And the first noticeable difference was how the lights were dimmed almost into darkness.</p><p>He thanked whoever did that, but only mentally. He wasn’t going to dare to open his mouth unless he really needed to.</p><p>His pain was subdued again, but he decided to go on slow breaths instead of making the same mistake of feeling relieved that he could breath. Pyotr had an idea that it wouldn’t last again.</p><p>Pyotr was still restrained to the bed, but it wasn’t uncomfortable this time around. He knew that if he forced it just a little, the thing would snap right off.</p><p>It didn’t take long before someone entered the room. He looked at the door, seeing a woman getting inside while seeming to whisper something to someone right outside. Pyotr couldn't hear her, so he just stared.</p><p>She soon closed the door behind her and took a step in the direction of the bed Pyotr was laying down on.</p><p>The woman was saying something, something he couldn't hear. He stopped looking at her, his mind entering a hazy state and he felt the pain starting to come back.</p><p>He felt she was going to touch him and he recoiled, looking bewildered at her. She seemed to get the memo and retreated her hand away.</p><p>She said something, but Pyotr could only give her a confused face before his nerves and muscles flared up in pain, full force.</p><p>He moved himself on the restraints, contorting a little while trying to find a good position to stay seeing he was feeling uncomfortable again. His eyes fell closed again in no time, leaving the strange woman behind.</p><p>[...]</p><p>By the third time, Pyotr was tired. <i>He didn't want to wake up, he wanted to sleep.</i> It was the least the universe could give him after fucking him up so much during all these years.</p><p>His pain wasn't there again, and already seeing the pattern of how things were going, he just decided to not move.</p><p>He had his eyes open, maintaining a quiet breathing pattern, one that he knew wouldn't hurt.</p><p>The lights were still dimmed, but now he could hear the beep beep of a machine a little to the side from the mattress he was laying on. He sighed softly because of that. His hearing decided to finally start healing.</p><p>The woman soon appeared again, this time around not discussing with anyone. She just opened the door, entered and closed behind herself while holding a clipboard on her hands.</p><p>Pyotr kept an eye on her while she read something on the papers she had in hand, and when she looked up, she seemed surprised by him being awake.</p><p>She moved in closer, giving him a small wave before pulling a chair and sitting besides the bed. She pulled in a piece of paper and wrote something down before pulling it up and showing him.</p><p>It was written <i>“I’m Doctor Christine Palmer, I’m taking care of your case for now while you’re here with us.”</i> She gave him a moment to read before putting it down and pulling another piece of paper. Pyotr called her attention by rattling his arm on the cuff, which was quite effective when she looked up almost immediately.</p><p>
  <i>He had a small resemblance of recognition of the woman, but he couldn't point out from where.<i></i></i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    
  </i>
</p>
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</p><p>“Can you hear me?” She asked.</p><p>Pyotr only gave her a blank look before she put the clipboard to the side and got up from the chair.</p><p>“I’m here to collect blood samples so we can send them to the lab before we call S.H.I.E.L.D. so they can have a conversation with you,” Christine said. He only gave her another look before letting his head fall back and he closed his eyes for a second.</p><p>He opened them again when he felt her coming near again, her hands extended in his direction. He shot his head back up, trying to get away before he saw that she had gloves on.</p><p>Pyotr took a deep breath while she just observed for a second.</p><p>She pulled out the tourniquet and put it on his arm a little above his elbow, waiting a little before she stuck the needle on his arm and took four small samples before taking the tourniquet off and putting a cotton ball where she had put the needle previously.</p><p>She kept one hand pressing the cotton ball on his arm, something that Pyotr was certain wasn’t necessary while she put the samples inside a small box she had on the side.</p><p>When Christine finished putting things away, she turned back to Pyotr and pulled the cotton ball off, looking at it for a moment and stopping when she saw that there wasn’t any blood in it. She just threw it on the trash can and put something sticky on his arm where she had put the needle before.</p><p>“I’ll take these to the labs, thank you.” She gave him a small wave before getting out of the room with the box she put his blood samples in.</p><p>He just stayed there, looking at the wall for some time before he ended up falling asleep in what seemed an eternity.</p><p>[...]</p><p>“I have the samples you asked me for,” Christine said, putting the box on Helen’s table. “And I don’t think we should call S.H.I.E.L.D., or anyone for the matter," she stated.</p><p>“It’s been almost a month since Everett passed him to Fury and he sent him to us. Secretary Ross is calling every day and everyone is on our backs. We need to at least call someone,” Helen commented. She got the box from the table, taking it to her station.</p><p>“He woke up once when he was with them and screamed so loud everyone thought he wasn’t going to wake up again. I was in the room last week when he woke up and he couldn’t hear anything, his eardrums weren’t even there.” She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. “He can hear again, Helen.”</p><p>Helen looked at Chrsitine for a moment and sighed.</p>

<p>“I know he’s probably tired, Christine, but if we don’t call someone ourselves, they will just come here and take him away.” Helen turned around to look at the things in her hands again. “I’m finally getting on to have results, and everyone is invested in this. We need to make him at least give us something that doesn’t involve us drying him from his own blood so we can keep him here.”</p><p>Christine could only sigh in a little bit of desperation, pulling a chair for herself.</p><p>“We could call Fury, see what he thinks about maybe sending Natasha to have a talk with him.” Helen pulled another chair, sitting besides Christine. “We need to keep him here if we want to at least see him heal.”</p><p>“He’s in constant pain.” Christine got up, going to the nearest window and looking outside for a second before turning to Helen again. “If they take him from here, he’ll probably never heal and we’ll never know the extent of how bad he is, in all ways.”</p><p>Helen wheeled herself a littel through the room, going to her purse and pulling out her phone. She searched for something before going to Christine direction with her chair and handing her the mobile.</p><p>“Call Fury and say we will only allow Natasha to come here,” she said. “If he asks why or says he’ll send someone else, you say to him that the only person passing through the lobby is Natasha, and that’s final.”</p><p>Christine only gave the other a nod before leaving the lab so she could make the call.</p><p>[...]</p><p>“Why do you want me to take this?” Natasha asked, phone on the table, on speaker. The other’s around the table had some variants of questioning looks and doubt. “You know very well we're in the middle of very important things, Nick.”</p><p>“Helen will only allow you to enter the place.” Fury sighed, seeming to be frustrated. “Can you just take this? We need someone to at least take care of this since my other agents are in missions.”</p><p>Natasha lays back in her chair, looking at everyone before stopping by Tony. He had his usual “I’m on my twentieth coffee already” look on his face that meant he didn’t have any sleep for at least a little over 30 hours.</p><p>The whole negotiation of the accords was kicking them on the butt. Steve doesn’t want to sign by the way they are now, and the team is a little divided because of it. She heard Tony and Steve having a fight not two days ago and the two seemed miserable after that, even now after they had already talked everything over, eating an entire ice cream pot in the process.</p><p>And now Fury just wanted her to take over something for him while she was trying her best to mediate everything and not let the place fall into shambles.</p><p>“Send us everything you have on him so we can take a look and help Natasha with this, Fury,” Clint chimed in, his body almost on top of the table by the position he was in. He looked like he himself hadn’t slept very well for the past week.</p><p>“There’s only the report on how they found him and the security fotagge of a nearby place and the dashboard cameras from the cars in Agent Ross' team,” Fury said. “<i>Found</i> being an overstatement since Ross’ team was following a lead about a Hydra mission and the boy just killed everyone before passing out and waking up just a week afterwards and screamed when the nurses tried to calm him down.”</p><p>The team looked at each other, questioning looks all around.</p><p>“You don’t have any identification on who he is?” Natasha inquiries.</p><p>“We don’t have anything on him, Miss Romanoff,” Fury declared. “I decided to send him to Doctor Cho so she could at least <i>see</i> if she could give me any answers on a medical point of view, but she hasn't sent me any relatories yet.”</p><p>Natasha took a deep breath and sighed.</p><p>“Send me any photos you took of him, I’ll ask FRIDAY to look over the databases I have access to,” Tony says, getting up from his chair. “Go there and have a talk with the kid, Nat. I’ll ask Happy to take you there.”</p><p>Romanoff got up from her own chair, confirming to Fury she’ll go there before ending the call and going to Tony’s side by where he walked to near the window of the conference room.</p><p>“Are you sure you want one more thing in this mess?” She asked him, Tony only giving her a nod back.</p><p>She gave him an understanding look before she got out of the room. Clint came running by her side, saying he was going with her just to make sure everything would be ok.</p><p>Natasha knew he wasn’t dealing that well with the whole stress, so she just allowed him to come with her so they could talk with the kid.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Pyotr was looking at the ceiling when he felt the presence of someone entering the building. His senses weren’t in the best state they could be and he knew that it was probably not a threat, but the building itself was quite small and it helped him know where people were.</p><p>He mostly could tell where Doctor Palmer was, and he had an idea about two or three other people around the place. But now, with more people, he really just wanted to take off those strains and get out of there.</p><p>He knew that he shouldn’t, that he should just take a proper deep breath and calm down, but the possibility of someone from Hydra coming to take him back to the hell he lived in before was big and he knew that, and he could admit that he wasn’t scared, but he was going to be angry again if they even tried.</p><p>Doctor Palmer said she was going to call someone to talk with him and those were probably them, but there was always the possibility.</p><p>In the distance, he heard the cables of the elevator moving while bringing the box up with three heartbeats coming from inside.</p><p>The noise was ringing so loud he didn’t realize the second he just pulled his hands up and snapped the leather cuffs that were holding his hands to the bed. His hands went directly to his ears, a little alarm noise coming from somewhere making him press his hands with more force to his ears.</p><p>He was trying so much to not let the noise explode his eardrums again that he didn’t see when four people entered the room.</p><p>Pyotr’s eyes were pressed closed, but the second he felt a hand coming his way, he just tugged hard on the cuffs holding his legs down and they snapped, his body falling out of the mattress and directly onto the floor.</p><p>He went away from the heartbeats, colliding with one of the corners of the room and just staying there. His instincts were screaming for him to grab something to defend himself, but the pain was so much that one sense was covering the other and he was disorientated on what was the next right move.</p><p>He could smell the gunpowder coming from something, somewhere in the room. The smell made him want to throw up and just call Spider from inside himself to see if he could do something. The problem was that he didn’t know how to call Spider himself, it was always other people calling for him.</p><p>His head started to throb and he couldn’t do anything about it.</p><p>It didn’t take long before he felt himself slipping from the real world into unconsciousness.</p><p>[...]</p><p>“His eardrum was perforated?”</p><p>Natasha nodded, and Tony sighed.</p><p>“I couldn’t even talk with him,” she started to explain. “The second we stepped in the building, Helen said he just ripped off his restraints and only covered his ears. He wasn’t trying to attack us when we entered his room, he only fell to the floor and got to the other side of the room away from us.”</p><p>Tony was the one who nodded this time, looking at the reports Natasha gave him when she came back with Clint and Happy. Clint was sitting on a chair by one of the windows of his workshop and Happy had long disappeared to take Pepper to a reunion she had to go to.</p><p>“Maybe you could do something for him.” Clint said while getting up to be nearer to Tony and Nat. “Palmer said his ear was healed before we got there, she even had an image to prove to us that it was healed.”</p><p>Natasha and Clint looked at Tony expectantly, and Tony could only sigh back.</p><p>He stopped to think for a while, so Natasha decided that the best was to lay down some words to make the case sound more convincing.</p><p>“We can’t have a talk with him if that happens every time we enter the place. He probably has very sensitive hearing, and by what Helen said he also has very sensitive eyesight.”</p><p>Tony stopped for a second, looking at Clint with one of his <i>“I just had an idea that may sound strange but makes sense in the end”</i> looks. The man just pointed to his own ear once and extended his hand to the archer, who gave him a strange look before taking off one of his own hearing aids and giving it to Tony.</p><p>The man took the hearing apparatus and put in one of his <i>smart tables</i>, having FRIDAY scan it and bring some schematics on hearing aids she could find.</p><p>Clint took back his aid when Tony gave it to him, understanding the memo around five minutes later when the two were just observing and Tony was talking just with FRIDAY.</p><p>As entertaining it was to watch Tony work, Clint decided to nudge Natasha, making a gesture with his head pointing to the exit. The two spies left the workshop, going to the common floor on the compound.</p><p>[...]</p><p>When Natasha and Clint went back to the U-GIN building Helen had gotten herself to be nearer to the compound, Helen herself was waiting for them outside. She was moving her weight from one foot to the other, guarding herself under the shade of the tree she had right by the front of the place.</p><p>The two spies were left by Happy a little down the road since the man had another place to be, so they were walking to the door. Clint was carrying the box with Tony’s invention and both were squinting their eyes because of the sun.</p><p>The clouds in the sky weren’t doing the best job in covering the sun.</p><p>Two days had already passed since the boy's outburst, Helen giving the team, but mostly Natasha and Tony, all of the updates she was having on him. According to Helen, he woke up a few hours later while Doctor Palmer was taking a look to his ears, and she said they had already begun to heal.</p><p>Yesterday Helen said she wasn’t going to put the restraints back since the other ones he had before were destroyed and he seemed to not even use a lot of force to just rip them out. The boy was ok with that and didn’t move much according to her, and the only other update was that he was sleeping curled on himself on the bed.</p><p>“I have him sedated for now. I synthesized something that will last long enough for us to arrive in his room and settle ourselves,” Helen said as the two stopped near her. “Christine and I decided to leave his ears covered with some bandages so we don’t have an accident again.”</p><p>“Let’s hope what Tony made is good enough so we can have a proper conversation with him,” Natasha commented. “Fury is already asking if we have something to send to him.”</p><p>“I haven’t sent anything to him,” Helen said, making a sign for them to get inside. “I made quite a few discoveries by analyzing his blood, the problem is that it's not my specialized area, so I’m trying to find someone that can decode some things for me.”</p><p>“Maybe Tony knows someone, or Bruce.” Clint said while entering the elevator with the two women. Helen clicked on the floor button and up they went.</p><p>“I’m talking with Bruce already actually.” Helen left the elevator first, guiding them through the small building.</p><p>Some of her equipment was big, but she insisted with Tony that he didn't need to go overboard with it when he showed her some plans he made. They decided on a smaller one and she paid for more than half of it with her money while claiming to Tony that it was her enterprise’s building and he was just an associate, not her <i>sugar daddy</i>.</p><p>“He said he maybe can help me, but he went to Asgard with Thor a few days after I contacted him,” Helen said, stopping by the door where she was keeping the boy. “Can you guys try to call him for me later? I know that there were some things happening in Asgard because of Thor and Loki’s sister, but Sif doesn’t want to tell me.”</p><p>“I’ll try calling for you,” Natasha reasured the woman.</p><p>The trio entered the room, Christine sitting on a chair besides the bed with a book about genetics in hand. Clint gave the box he was carrying to the woman, who promptly put herbook down without even marking the page she was reading.</p><p>Natasha came to the conclusion that it was just to pass time before they got there, so she didn't say anything.</p><p>Doctor Palmer opened the box, seeing the two aids that seemed to be hearing aids, but Tony had already filled her in into what it really did. She grabbed a pair of gloves and put them on before grabbing the aids from the box.</p><p>The spies gave her a questioning look about the gloves, something she didn’t pay attention to, but Helen ended up doing.</p><p>“The first time he woke up, he was undisturbed,” she began explaining, pulling their attention to her. “He was mostly disorientated and in pain, but when the nurses touched him he started to scream. He screamed so much he ended up passing out. It was the first video of the whole file that Fury sent me when they gave him his custody, and I can say I regret watching it. We thought that maybe gloves helped, and they actually did. The only bad reaction of him being here was the first day you guys came.”</p><p>Natasha and Clint nodded, giving their attention back to Palmer. She had already uncovered one of his ears and put the aid in without much of a hassle, but now she seemed to be thinking on how to turn him over without disturbing the boy so his metabolism wouldn’t burn all of the sedative.</p><p>He was laid down on his side, and that was not helping right now.</p><p>She did her best to make him at least lay on his back, sighing when she succeeded on her little mission. Helen could just watch since she wasn’t the one that was handling the boy in a more physical manner and she didn’t want the boy having a bad reaction if she touched him.</p><p>When Christine finished, she retracted her hands since the boy already started to squirm a little from being moved, and probably from having things put on his ears.</p><p>As he opened his eyes, there was a second where he moved a little too fast when putting his hands up to his ears that made Natasha pull her gun out and take a deep breath when she saw he just moved his hands up.</p><p>He seemed a little disoriented at first, but the second his nose seemed to get something in the air, he sneezed.</p><p>He sneezed two or three times again before he put one of his hands on his nose and squeezed his nostrils in between his fingers.</p><p>He got his head up, sitting on the bed with his back slouched while still holding his nose. His eyes went up, looking around a little before spotting the source in the hands of a redhead, one that he seemed to recognize in some way but couldn’t point out from where.</p><p>“Порох,(Gunpowder,)” he said, pointing slightly in the direction of the gun on Natasha’s hand.</p><p>The woman seemed to understand the memo when she put the gun back  on the holster, the smell not going away fully but being better than having it out to smell even worse.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for reading.</p><p>*Looks at the train ride that's going to be the next chapter.* ...well, chu chu, motherf–</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. "Let's do our best then,"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My computer broke down yesterday and now I'm sad. Still writing, tho.</p><p>*Me, going down the sadness hill.*</p><p>"See you by the end."</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The boy didn't say anything besides the <i>gunpowder</i> warning he gave to Natasha. It didn't matter the question or even if they rephrased it, he didn't say a peep.</p><p>Natasha left the building with stress boiling on her head, so much she had a headache now.</p><p>She has so many things to take care of, and now she had someone that didn't talk. Probably the only thing she could even take from this was that he seemed to recognize her by how much he stared.</p><p>Nat herself had no idea who he was.</p><p>Her and Clint followed their way inside the compound, Natasha leaving Clint behind while she went to talk with Tony.</p><p>Just by the way she entered his workshop, Tony already went to grab some medicine he had to the side while she pulled a chair for herself and sat down, taking deep breaths. He gave her a pill and a bottle of water, which she promptly took and gulped down.</p><p>“He said one word, one,” she started, finishing the water bottle and putting it on the table besides her. Tony took from the table to put it away. “He only said <i>порох</i>, and then nothing! He started at me the entire time but didn't answer any of my questions.”</p><p>“Nat, you're losing your cool temperament,” Tony commented, and she looked at him bewildered.</p><p>“I'm stressed, Tony!” She got up from her chair, walking fast to the nearby sofa and grabbed one of the pillows before going back to Tony.</p><p>Sensing her intentions, he started to walk around the shop with her right behind him.</p><p>“Nat, stop,” he tried to say, already holding a laugh.</p><p>“I'm stressed and the thing you say it's that I'm losing my cool, Tony Stark?!” She threw the pillows at him, hitting him right on the back.</p><p>He caught the pillow from the ground, seeing that she had already gotten another one.</p><p>Tony ran out of the lab, Natasha coming right after him. He was doing his best to not start laughing or lose his balance.</p><p>The two ran to the common room, passing near some of the other members of the team on their way. Steve, who was sitting by the kitchen counter with a newspaper in hands, was very confused by the sight in front of him.</p><p>Tony ran around the couch, ducking when Nat threw the pillow she was holding on him, which hit Sam, who was sitting on the sofa, square in the face.</p><p>She got another pillow on the sofa, throwing at Tony again, who used his pillow to defend himself.</p><p>They kept at that until Natasha didn't have any more pillows to throw, and by that point she had hit almost everyone that was in there. When she realized she didn't have any more pillows in hands she stopped, taking a few deep breaths while keeping her hands on her waist.</p><p>Then, she looked around and saw everyone holding the pillows she had hit them with, and sensing what was about to happen, she ran.</p><p>The other threw the pillows at her, not so many hitting her but quite a big quantity. By that point, most of them were laughing, including Nat herself.</p><p>[...]</p><p>It was the other day when Natasha got to have everyone sitting in one of the meeting rooms so she could call Bruce.</p><p>The man was in Asgard with Thor and Jane, the woman was doing some research while Bruce just got a few of his own papers to read while he stayed a bit to the side and just let his boyfriend do whatever he needed to do.</p><p>The call took some time to connect, but when it did, the team could see Bruce sitting on a chair with a quite luxurious bedroom in the background.</p><p>“Good morning, Banner,” Tony started, taking his seat nearer the camera. “Does your mother-in-law just let you steal Thor’s bedroom or what?”</p><p>“Good morning to you too,Tony,” Bruce answered, picking up a cup and drinking something. “And Frigga doesn’t care, before you start again.” He put the cup down and looked at the lenses. “So, how’s everything there?”</p><p>“We got one word out of him, he apparently has very sensitive hearing and knows very well how to stare at someone,” Natasha said, huffing. She was still a little stressed because of the day before.</p><p>“Natasha’s just mad it wasn’t easy to get things out of him like it normally is,” Clint said, snickering. Natasha gave him a glare and he held a laugh.</p><p>“Well, at least he woke up,” Bruce called up their attention. “I got Helen’s report earlier and gave it a quick read. I can only say for sure that I understand a few things that she couldn’t, but besides that, I’m not of much help.”</p><p>“Don’t you maybe have someone to recommend to us? Someone that understands?” Tony asks.</p><p>Before Bruce can answer, the team could hear a knock on the door of the bedroom the man was. He just said something not so loud and went over to answer the door, everyone being a little surprised when Frigga enters the room and Bruce closes the door again.</p><p>The team even straightens a little while Bruce is pulling a chair for the woman, giving time for eveyone to take a deep breath before Frigga sits down and gives them a little wave.</p><p>“I’m very sorry to interrupt your reunion, dears,” the queen says, a small smile on her lips. “My children decided to have a… what was the word you used yesterday, Bruce?” She asks, turning to the man. He looks at her, his head tilting a little to the side.</p><p>“Screaming match?” He asks. She points lightly in his direction and nods.</p><p>“Yes, screaming match,” she confirms. “Loki and Hela had a point, Thor had another, then Hela agreed with something Thor said and now they’re behaving like younglings all over again.”</p><p>“It’s not a problem having you interrupting, Queen Frigga,” Natasha called up the woman’s attention, a smile in her lips. She was trying to not look threatening.</p><p>“Oh, just call me Frigga, I’m just filling in until we find someone better, really.” The woman says. “What were you discussing? I know I’m a little old already, but maybe I could help with something.”</p><p>“Remember that I told you about the accords last week?” Bruce asked, Frigga nodding in response. “Fury, the eyepatch  guy from that picture I showed you, he sent Helen someone to take care of and she has been studying what they did to the boy. But she got results we don’t know how to analyse, so we need to find someone that does know how to interpret the results.”</p><p>Frigga nodded, understanding. She was keeping her hands together on her lap.</p><p>“Can Jane help? She has some knowledge on things.”</p><p>“Jane’s study doesn’t include what we need to analyse, nor Darcy.” Bruce sighed. “We need a geneticist, one that maybe understands how mutations work.”</p><p>“Don’t you have someone that co-signed your studies on gamma radiation, Bruce?” Tony asked, calling people’s attention to him.</p><p>“Hm… Betty could help.” Bruce nodded. “I don’t know what she has been doing, if she stopped studying gamma. The only other time I heard about her work after we went our separate ways she was studying a little about genetics, but I'm not sure if she continued.”</p><p>“Perfect then, what’s her contact info?” Tony questioned, already pulling a Stark Pad.</p><p>“I think she’s still at Culver University, if not, search back to Harvard.” Bruce said. “Her name is Elizabeth Ross.”</p><p>The team stopped for a moment, looking at each other before looking at Bruce again.</p><p>“Isn’t that Secretary Ross’ daughter?” Rhodey pointed out. Bruce just nodded in response. “Do you think this is a good idea?”</p><p>“Well, since I remember, she and her father are stranded.” Bruce shrugged. “When I was in university with her, the only times she mentioned her father she seemed ready to take a gun and go to his office to shoot him, so I think we’re good.”</p><p>“I’ll give her a call later, give her contact to Helen if she agrees for a meeting,” Tony said, turning off the electronic he had in hands and putting it a little to the side. “Well, since the principal matter has already been resolved, partially, what has been happening in Asgard?”</p><p>Bruce only gave Frigga a look, and she gave him a shrug like he could tell if he wanted to. The man cleared his throat.</p><p>“King Odin was killed, so me and Thor came to the funeral and brought Jane since she was already close to them.” Bruce gave a look to the queen, who only made a hand movement for him to continue. “They tried to kill Frigga around a week ago, so Hela came up, from literal hell, to help everyone find who tried to kill Frigga.”</p><p>“They’re trying to find the best way to find the culprit, and I was helping. But then they started to scream in my dining room and I was getting a headache because of them,” Frigga complemented. “I told them to use magic, and then they started to discuss who was more powerful to do the finding spells. I would do it myself, but they don’t want me using my magic before I finish healing.”</p><p>There was an uncomfortable silence right after, different reactions being seen all over the room.</p><p>“Talking about Secretary Ross, did he send the papers already?” Bruce asked.</p><p>“No, not yet.” Tony said. “And it will probably still take some time.”</p><p>Bruce just nodded, a loud screech being heard from his side of the call. Bruce and Frigga exchanged looks before slightly nodding to each other.</p><p>“I think it’s better we go see what's going on downstairs.” Bruce said.</p><p>“I think too,” Frigga confirmed. She looked back at the screen, waving to the camera. “It was lovely to meet all of you, I hope your studies turn out well. I’ll send Loki to help if you need, he’s been improving very much in his magic studies recently.”</p><p>“I’ll call you later, bye guys.” Bruce said lastly, giving everyone a smile. Everyone said their <i>byes</i>, and before the feed cut off, they heard another shout in the background.</p><p>They started there in silence for a few seconds while looking at the black screen, Steve being the one that cut the tension.</p><p>“Well,” he said. “That was a wild ride.”</p><p>Some just agreed before getting up from their chairs and leaving and others seemed to be holding laughs back.</p><p>“I'll pass Doctor Ross's contact to Helen ,” Tony said, getting up from his seat and leaving the meeting room behind. Steve got up and went after him.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Pyotr was laying down on his side on the bed. His stomach was upset and, even if he was used to that, it was never a good sensation.</p><p>Helen gave him soup to eat so his body could start getting used to having something to digest, but it didn't seem the best idea now.</p><p>He was used to not eating anything for long periods of time, he really was, but now he had the slightest idea that they would give him semi-regular meals.</p><p>He felt a bad sensation and got up from the bed, going to the bathroom just in time for him to bend over the toilet and vomit.</p><p>It wasn't a good sensation, and when he finally finished, he used the seat to support his head while he took deep breaths.</p><p>A second smaller wave came not long after and he flushed when it finally ended.</p><p>He sat down on the floor with his back to a wall, bending his knees and letting his head fall on top of them. He hugged his legs, taking deep breaths.</p><p>Pyotr heard the bedroom door opening and closing and a faint heartbeat coming with it. He was glad for the aids Christine put on his ears, at least it was helping him not go crazy.</p><p>And talking about the woman, she appeared by the bathroom door, Pyotr sensing she was staying down at him for a few seconds before she sat down beside him on the bathroom floor. She wasn't glued to him, but it was near enough for him to sense that she was there.</p><p>“It seems to suck not being able to keep food down,” she commented. He only nodded slightly before she continued. “Do you want some tea? I know a few that maybe will help.”</p><p>He got his head up and laid it down sideways against the wall, keeping his eyes on her. They had a small staring match before Pyotr just closed his eyes and nodded.</p><p>She got up from the floor and left the bedroom. Pyotr just stayed there on the floor, thinking a little about what his life had become.</p><p>He could trust these people, couldn't he? Maybe he should just tell them whatever they want to know and end with this whole thing. The problem maybe was that his memory was laying down and resting in the moment, so there wasn't much he could do about that.</p><p>Pyotr knew a way he could just access all of the memories he needed to have back, but it was quite painful, he never found a way to get them that wasn't painful.</p><p>He stayed there thinking for a while, not realizing when Christine came back. He jumped when she touched his shoulder to take him out of his daze, looking at her a little bewildered. He took a deep breath and was relieved when he realized she was wearing a pair of cotton gloves.</p><p>She helped him get up from the floor and he cleaned his mouth with some water on the sink before they went back to the bedroom.</p><p>Christine gave him a cup with some liquid inside, and there was a little bag to the side. He assumed that  was the tea she was talking about, so he sat on the bed and drank it while Christine was reading some papers she had brought.</p><p>He didn’t know what it was, so he just looked at the papers from time to time while she was turning the page, catching just a few words here and there.</p><p>As he finished his tea, he waved his hand to get her attention and gave her the cup back. She thanked him and was ready to leave the room when he decided to call her attention.</p><p>“Christine,” he called her. She stopped on her tracks, turning around slowly. He pointed to the papers she was holding and then to himself, making a <i>read</i> sign. She went back to the bed, giving him the papers.</p><p>He made a gesture of writing, so she took a pen she had in her pocket and gave to him.</p><p>Pyotr wrote down a title and a surname on the back of the papers, the only thing he could remember without forcing his memory too much. He gave her back both the papers and the pen, getting up and pulling the chair from beside the bed to near the window.</p><p>While he was making himself comfortable, Doctor Palmer left the room a little hurried, going a little down the corridor before coming back to close the door and run again.</p><p>[...]</p><p>“I would love to take a look for you, I’m not doing anything at the moment,” Betty said, a small smile adorning her lips.</p><p>“I’ll send you the entire dossie we have here then,” Tony sighed, looking at Natasha. “Do you know how long it can take for you to at least say to us if you understand or not?”</p><p>“Well, I can give it a quick read first. If you have any notes about what the others understood, it can help,” the woman tilted her head a little to the left. “By now, how many pages of research you already have?”</p><p>Natasha and Tony exchanged a look before looking back at the screen.</p><p>“Around fifty,” Natasha said. Betty’s eyebrows clearly lifted from receiving the information. “Bruce said he understood around ten of them and Helen another ten.”</p><p>“She’s trying to do all the tests she can remember and has equipment for on her building,” Tony explained. “She did a tower of blood tests, ruling out any diseases that maybe could help us identify him since he doesn’t seem to want to speak with us.”</p><p>“That’s good, that’s good.” Betty got one of her hands up, touching her lower lip with the side of her index finger. “Can you send them to me in an hour max? I’m leaving to go apply the final tests to my classes here, so can give it a look while my students finish doing their things.”</p><p>“I’m sending to you already,” Tony said as he asked FRIDAY to send the woman the archive he made to put everything.</p><p>“I’ll just apply my finals and read everything you send me,” Betty gave a proper smile to them. “I’ll give you an answer in around three hours, ok?”</p><p>Tony and Natasha gave her the <i>oks</i> and the call disconnected, Betty saying she was leaving her house.</p><p>Natasha was already leaving the workshop when Tony received a message and called her over fast.</p><p>“Nat!” He called. She turned around, already with a questioning look in her face. “Christine said he wrote something down for her.”</p><p>“What did he write?” She went back to where he was standing, looking over his shoulder to the photo.</p><p>A simple “Доктор Орлова” was scribbled in the paper, and Not recognized the name from somewhere.</p><p>“Doctor Orlova,” she read. Tony nodded, asking FRIDAY to search for him about any <i>Orlovas</i> the AI could find with a doctor title.</p><p>FRIDAY took a few minutes to find results, and when she found, she had five different women linked to a few different articles through the years.</p><p>“I found three Orlovas alive with a doctor title and another two that died in the span of twenty years ago. One died in 2003 and the second 2008,” The AI announced.</p><p>“Let’s search the living ones first,” Tony asked. “Maybe he could give us a name because she’s still alive.”</p><p>The AI put the deceased ones to the side showing all the results of the living ones, including photos. Natasha couldn’t recognize anyone in the photos and Tony couldn’t find any results involving genetics studies, just two in mechanics and one on disease research that didn’t seem that promising.</p><p>Tony asked FRIDAY to go back to the deceased ones, Natsha rolling through the photos and again, not recognizing anyone. Tony also didn’t find any genetics studies on them and the two just looked at each other, a little defeated.</p><p>“Did he give a name to throw us out of the path?” Tony asked, leaning back on his chair.</p><p>Natasha got up from hers, going to Tony and putting one of her hands on his hair. She took a deep breath and sighed.</p><p>“There must be more to this than just that,” she said. “Maybe we did just what would be obvious, we need to think how to do this research if this boy is going to be so quizzical with us.”</p><p>He looked up to her, pursing his lips and looking down to the screen in front  of him again.</p><p>“Let’s do our best then,” Tony said. “FRIDAY, pull up a report on everyone with the surname Orlova that you can find, even if people changed names through the years. Find me every single one of them so we can apply some filters later,” he asked.</p><p>“On it boss,” the AI answered.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Pyotr had fallen asleep again. He was feeling tired, his body wanting to give up from time to time.</p><p>His memory was still on a deep sleep, but that didn’t stop the nightmares from coming.</p><p>He didn’t even know how much sleep he actually got, the only thing he knew was that it wasn't enough and he woke up jumping and falling to the floor. He groaned, preferring to stay on the floor for the time being.</p><p>It was dark outside and he couldn’t see any light coming from the corridor under the door of the bedroom.</p><p>Pyotr took a few deep breaths before he got up, stopping a second to adjust one of the aids in his ears and went to the door. He was using whatever in his way to support his body since he couldn’t feel that much energy flowing, cursing in spanish under his breath when he almost fell.</p><p>He reached the door handle, twisting it and being a little surprised when he found that the door wasn’t locked. He thought that maybe it would be and he would need to content himself on looking out through the <i>bedroom</i> window, not that he could just run from there so easily.</p><p>He had an idea that maybe the doors to the outside were locked, but he just wanted to walk a little.</p><p>It had been so long since he last had enough energy to even get up from wherever they would put him after he passed out that the action seemed strange to him. It was normal for Spider, but Pyotr himself was always carrying the weight of the pain so Spider had energy to keep the body alive throughout missions and whatever Hydra wanted them to do.</p><p>Pyotr was using the corridor wall to support himself, going step by step while looking to the big glass wall to the outside. The moon was shining in the sky and he was glad they had given him proper clothes.</p><p>He could feel the cold air flowing through the building and under the floor on his feet.</p><p>By some point, he stopped. He went down a few flights of stairs and was by the ground floor, looking through the front door. If he wanted, he could just escape.</p><p>Break down the glass and run into the forest.</p><p>But he wasn’t going to, he knew that. It had been so much time since someone looked at him and didn’t see him as a lab experiment but a living being that he felt he could at least say the universe finally received his message to give him a break.</p><p>The moon was shining and he didn't need to run to nowhere. He could just stay there and look, nothing to bother him. He could just observe and no one was going to come and rush him.</p><p>He stayed there for what seemed to be over an hour before he decided to take the aids from his ears, feeling a little uncomfortable with them. It took a few minutes before he could finally hear properly, so he did a little test while he was at it.</p><p>Pyotr went on his usual searches, trying to focus his hearing on specific things and not lose them. He could hear the wind passing through the trees outside, majorly through the leaves of the one just a few meters from the door.</p><p>It was a big tree, and there were birds sleeping on it.</p><p>The forest was just as alive during the night as it was during the day. The only difference was that during the day it was louder, so loud it almost screamed. And then, during the night, it was light suffling, the wind moving and a few animals here and there.</p><p>He brought his hearing back to the building doing his usual search. He could only find one heartbeat throughout the entire place, which was strange since he remembered that Christine wasn’t the only one in the building.</p><p>Pyotr focused on the heartbeat, moving his body along the place, going up a few stairs until he found the right floor. He moved through the corridor, not needing the wall much to keep himself up, but still running his hand through it.</p><p>He stopped in front of a door, hearing the heartbeat coming from inside it. He lifted his hand to the door handle, twisting it and being a little glad he found it open.</p><p>He opened the door a little, taking a look inside before moving to the room and closing the door behind him.</p><p>There was a man laying down there, silver hair glowing under the moonlight and the faint light of the machines that were hooked up to him. There was a tube going inside his mouth and a quite big quantity of wires going under the hospital gown and the light bed sheets that were covering him.</p><p>Pyotr got near the bed, stopping right by one of the sides. He had a faint memory of him that he got from someone once, but he couldn’t remember exactly who it was.</p><p>Without thinking much, Pyotr got his right hand up and laid in gently on the man’s forehead under his hair. He took a deep breath and absorbed everything for a few seconds before he took his hand off the man and sighed.</p><p>He looked around the room, seeing an armchair by the window with a pillow on it. He went to the object, observing it for a second before tugging and pulling the chair with him.</p><p>He set it beside the bed and sat on it, putting his feet on the seat and finding a comfortable position before turning to the man and lifting his arm a little, putting his hand up on his pulse and letting the man’s fall on his own.</p><p>Pyotr took a deep breath and laid his head on the edge of the bed, sighing and letting himself be pulled away.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>My computer really broke and now I don't know how I'm going to do my university work. I don't have money so, yeah, I'm about to see what my phone can do to help me in this needing moment.</p><p>Thank you for reading, see you next time.</p><p> </p><p>*Looks at what's coming next.*</p><p>"Houston, we have a problem."</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. “Красная комната,(Red Room,)”</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"What if I told you..."</p><p>*Put on the sunglasses.*</p><p>"It's trauma again?"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Helen woke up early in the morning.</p><p>She looked out the window, seeing the sun coming up with her outside of her apartment. She got up from her bed, following her way to the kitchen and putting her kettle on the stove with water.</p><p>She turned on the stove, letting it be while she got out of her apartment to go downstairs get her mail.</p><p>The newspaper was with the guard that stayed by the door of her building. She thanked him and got the other box waiting for her there, going back up to her apartment.</p><p>By the time she arrived back, her kettle had started to whistle. She left the box on the counter and went to turn off the stove while she read the front page news.</p><p>She mostly still signed herself to the physical newspaper just so she could have something to use to send her boxes with samples to other researchers from time to time. It still made a big pile to have all of them there, but she would always find ways to use them.</p><p>Helen got a mug from her cupboard and a tea bag from one of the drawers. She put the tea bag on her cup and used a towel to get her kettle and pour water on her cup.</p><p>She would usually drink coffee in the mornings, but today was Saturday, and Saturday was tea day. Along with Sunday.</p><p>When she finished eating her breakfast, she put the dishes on the dishwasher and went to take her bath.</p><p>As she was leaving the shower, her phone started to ring from the other room. Helen just got her towel and wrapped it on herself. She got the phone just in time to not let the call fall on her voicemail.</p><p>“Hello?” She asked, trying to adjust the towel with one hand and holding the phone with the other. She started to walk back to her bedroom.</p><p>“Hello, Doctor Cho, this is Betty Ross,” the woman on the other side said.</p><p>“Oh, hi.” Helen got another towel on her wardrobe to dry her hair. “How can I help you?”</p><p>“Ah, I just arrived in New York. None of my students at the university stayed behind on my subjects, so I decided to take a plane earlier.”</p><p>"That 's amazing.” She got the towel to stay on her hair while she picked some underwear on her drawers.</p><p>“So… I actually called to see if you can help me,” Betty said. “Are you going to your lab today?”</p><p>“Yeah, probably in an hour or two.”</p><p>“Would you mind giving me a ride? I don’t have a car here.”</p><p>“I don’t mind, are you going to wait at the airport?”</p><p>“Oh, no, I’m going to Manhattan. I’m just waiting for the train.” A few sounds of some things in the distance got through the microphone for a second before Betty continued. “Which station is the nearest to your house? I’ll just stop on the way to grab myself a coffee somewhere.”</p><p>“You can stop by Penn Station, I live just a block east from there.” Helen adjusted her bra while holding the phone between her shoulder and her ear. “I’ll send you my address by message, I just need to clean my apartment a little before we go so you can come here directly.”</p><p>“Ok, then.” Helen heard the noise of a train arriving at a station. “I’ll be going, see you there. Thanks.”</p><p>“See you.” She ended the call, putting her phone to the side.</p><p>Helen looked inside her wardrobe, deciding to put on something comfortable for now since she needed to do some cleaning.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Helen and Betty talked a little about the research during the car ride. It took around two hours to arrive at her building, and that's why she would sleep there most days. But she liked to go home at least two times a week just to decompress and sleep on the expensive mattress she had bought herself when she decided to move more permanently to New York.</p><p>Seoul wasn’t a bad place, she loved her building there, but she was always so distant from the others, a lot of times she would pass days without seeing someone.</p><p>It was a healthy change if she could describe it in other words.</p><p>As they arrived by the road, Helen could see that Christine was already there. Not by seeing her car, but by seeing the woman under the tree by the front door. The woman waved at her car, so Helen gave back a little wave and went to stop her car.</p><p>Both women left the vehicle, going in the direction of where Christine was.</p><p>The strange sight was seeing the boy she had been studying laying down on the grass under the sun just a few meters away from the tree. His eyes were closed and he almost seemed to be sleeping. Helen would think he was sleeping if he hadn’t moved slightly when they were getting near the tree.</p><p>“He was waiting by the front door when I arrived,” Christine said when the two women stopped by her side to observe the boy. “He just pointed to the outside and the sun, so we made a compromise of him eating his breakfast so he could stay under the sun for some time. He just laid down there a few minutes ago.”</p><p>Helen just nodded, deciding to guide Betty to inside the building after she presented herself to Christine. The two entered the elevator, observing for the last time Christine just keeping an eye on the boy while he stayed down on the grass.</p><p>After a few more minutes, Christine got out from under the tree and went to him, crouching down besides him and touching his shoulder with one of her fingers. He opened his eyelids, his eyes shining a little under the sunlight.</p><p>“If you stay more under the sun, you’ll get a sunburn,” she said.</p><p>His response was to close his eyes and take a deep breath before getting up, shaking a little his clothes so the dirt could get out.</p><p>The two entered the building side by side, the boy keeping both his hands on the pockets of the pants he was wearing, staying on one of the corners of the elevator when they entered.</p><p>They followed back to his room, the boy falling down on the matress face first. Christine let out a laugh while she closed the door, sitting by her usual chair.</p><p>As she was opening one of the reports she got from the hospital, the boy called her attention to him. He sat down properly on the mattress and the two stared at each other as in a small contest until he made a writing motion with his hand.</p><p>She got a piece of paper and gave it to him with the pen she had. She waited for a moment while we wrote down something, and then she read what he wrote down when he showed her the paper.</p><p>“Did they find something on Doctor Orlova?” it was written. Christine just sighed, shaking her head. He stopped to think for a moment, looking at the window for a second before looking again at the paper and writing something else down.</p><p>He showed her again when he finished.</p><p>“I don’t remember her first name,” it read.</p><p>“But do you know something else that maybe is important?” Christine asked.</p><p>“Her mother’s name is Martha, I heard once when she was talking on the phone,” he wrote.</p><p>“That’s very good, it narrows down a lot the search.” Christine got her phone from her pocket, the boy keeping his head down a little. He seemed to be thinking. “Do you mind if I call Stark now?”</p><p>He just shook his head, so Christine went in search of his phone number. Helen had given her yesterday before she left, so it wasn’t hard to find the number. She clicked on the button to make the call and put it on speaker, putting her phone on the edge of the bed.</p><p>The boy crossed his legs and sat on the other side of the phone, looking down at the device with a bit of what seemed curiosity.</p><p>“Hello, you know who I am speaking,” the voice came from the phone.</p><p>“Good morning, Mister Stark, this is Christine Palmer,” the woman said.</p><p>“Oh, hello. Glad Helen finally decided to pass my number to you.” The man laughed. “She has a tendency of not passing my number to important people while saying I’m a bad influence.”</p><p>“I already knew you were a bad influence, we just thought it would be easier if I contacted you directly instead of giving her my messages to pass to you.”</p><p>“You hurt me, Doctor Palmer.” The man said, sighing right after. “So, how can I help you?”</p><p>“I have another clue to your mystery Orlova girl.”</p><p>At that second the two heard something falling to the ground and someone groaning in the background. Christine was definitely holding her laugh while the boy just observed the whole ordeal.</p><p>“What is it?” Tony asked.</p><p>“He doesn’t remember her first name, but our mystery boy said he heard once your mystery doctor say that her mother’s name is Martha. M-A-R-T-H-A, according to him,” she spelled.</p><p>“Oh this helps so much.” There were some other noises in the background before they heard a huff. “Is there anything else? It would help us narrow down more.”</p><p>Christine just looked to the boy, who thought for a second before crouching down and saying just two words.</p><p>“Красная комната,(Red Room,)” he said, a little bit sounding like a whisper.</p><p>“Hm, thank you very much for your input, mystery boy.” Tony sighed and a few clicks could be heard after. “I’ll be going then, I think we have a good lead. If your memory kicks more, buddy, send the information to us.”</p><p>Tony ended the call, and Christine and the boy were left there looking at the device.</p><p>“Well, that was something,” Christine said, grabbing the phone and putting back on her pocket.</p><p>The boy just huffed a little frustrated sound before falling sideways with his face on his pillow. Christine just laughed before grabbing her iPad to read the relatories the hospital had sent to her for analysis.</p><p>[...]</p><p>“I know who Martha Orlova is,” Natasha stated. “She was a surgeon in the Red Room. Her husband used to work there too, but he was just a guard.”</p><p>Natasha didn’t seem to be very comfortable talking about that, and it wasn’t even lunch time, and it was a Saturday.</p><p>Comfortable was the least thing Tony was also. He had pulled an all-nighter to supervise FRIDAY while he was also doing another upgrade on his suit.</p><p>“She’s the mother of the person we're looking for, the only mystery boy remembers,” Tony said, passing through the photos of all known women named <i>Martha Orlova</i> they could find.</p><p>Natasha stopped him, pointing at a woman in a group picture. The woman was blonde, or at least seemed to be a dark type of blonde.</p><p>“That is Martha Orlova,” she said. Natasha sighed before saying her next phrase in a whisper. “She’s the one that did my graduation surgery.”</p><p>Tony stopped, turning slowly to Natasha. The two exchanged a look before Natasha just put one of her hands on his hair and ruffled it.</p><p>“Don’t worry about that, you softie,” she said. She had a small smile on her lips, turning to face the photo on the screen again. “Let’s just find out why our buddy remembers, or seems to know, her daughter.”</p><p>Tony just nodded, turning to the screen again and asking FRIDAY to search for everything he could find on the woman.</p><p>It didn’t take long before they found her daughter.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Natasha went up with the elevator, taking deep breaths while holding the file in her hands. Tony made a compilation of everything he could find on the woman and printed so Natasha could take with her.</p><p>It was already sunset when they finally finished, so Natasha just decided to go to the U-GIN building to leave this clue of theirs behind so they could move forward. By the time she arrived there, it was night.</p><p>Natasha went directly to the boy’s room, knocking on the wood before just opening the door. Christine was sitting there, soundly asleep, and the boy had a book in his hands, a small story one.</p><p>The boy got his head up as she closed the door behind her, getting near the bed under his watchful eyes.</p><p>“We found Doctor Orlova, or at least her information,” Natasha said. She extended her hand, holding the file to him.</p><p>He got the papers from her hand, opening the file and staring at the photo right on the first page. He took one of his hands and patted down on the mattress, moving his body backwards to give space.</p><p>He turned pages while she got near and sat down by the end of the bed. It took just a few minutes before he closed the file and handed it back to her.</p><p>“She took care of me,” he whispered. He looked briefly at Christine, just making sure the woman was still sleeping before lowering his head down. “She made me a machine, I could never stop improving, and if I did anything wrong, she would put me in a freezer, one of those room ones.”</p><p>He sighed, adjusting himself on the mattress while giving the outside window a look before looking at Natasha.</p><p>“Other agents would be tortured if they made mistakes, and I couldn’t talk without Orlova punishing me, so they would put the guilt on me so they could get away. Sometimes they would make mistakes on purpose so they could send the guilt to me, so they could punish me themselves.”</p><p>Natasha took a deep breath, absorbing everything he was saying.</p><p>She had lived for quite a long time receiving punishments herself in the Red Room, but they wouldn’t do it constantly. What he was saying seemed to be a constant thing, something she could grasp the concept of but couldn’t understand how people could be so sadistic to the point of torturing a child.</p><p>“Do you remember since when they had you?” Natsha asked, gulping down the lump that was forming on her throat.</p><p>“I was five when the plane crashed,” he continued whispering. “I don’t remember what year it was, but it was a little after my birthday. I only remember my mom fighting with someone while I was pretending to sleep and the plane fell. She died in front of me and I passed out. From then on I don’t remember what exactly happened.”</p><p>Nat just nodded.</p><p>“Do you remember your name?” She questioned. He just shook his head. “Was there something they would call you?”</p><p>“Pyotr, but it never sounded right. And they never needed Pyotr, they only wanted Spider.” He continued when she gave him a questioning look. “Orlova would say seven words. Seven words was enough to bring Spider to the surface, and I couldn’t do anything. So we learned to live with each other. I would let him come to the surface without fighting against it and would feel the pain so he could let our body stay alive during missions.”</p><p>He grabbed the pillow that was behind him, putting it on his lap on top of the book that was already there.</p><p>“They trained Spider to not feel pain, but it was just me taking all of it away. A broken leg? The pain of breaking it would come to me so he could continue like nothing happened. Being shot at? I got the pain for myself and he would just hold the wound closed until we went back to the base so Orlova could take the bullet out.”</p><p>“Would you mind? If we called you Pyotr?” Natasha asked.</p><p>He just looked at her for a moment before lowering his head.</p><p>“I don’t mind. It's just…” he trailed off, so she completed it for him.</p><p>“Wrong?” And he nodded in acknowledgment.</p><p>The two stayed in that silence for a few minutes, Pyotr’s eyes looking out the window while Natasha finished absorbing everything so she could come back to the compound.</p><p>“I’ll be going then,” Natasha announced, getting up from the bed. Pyotr only gave her a nod and continued with his eyes focused on the window.</p><p>She left the room behind, thinking about the monsters she would need to slay next.</p><p>[...]</p><p>As Natasha entered the building, she saw a few guards moving along the tree line with their flashlights in hand. She locked the glass door, observing FRIDAY move the little mechanisms of the reinforced metal sheets that stay retracted during the day. The sheets covered the whole glass front of the first floor.</p><p>She went up the stairs, guiding herself through the little maze that was the compound. As she arrived by the common room, and only Sam was there, sleeping on the couch.</p><p>Scott came with Hope so they could spend the weekend there and Clint took the children to the farm house, just three hours away from the compound, so Laura and Maria could go on their date since it was the only day Maria could take a day off.</p><p>Clint and Laura separated not even a year ago, just a little after the whole accident that was Ultron. Pietro and him were blooming a little and the idea of formally separating was in air way before Laura got pregnant with Nathaniel.</p><p>The two had some bad years with Clint always being away, and then Laura found Maria while the agent was defending the other woman when someone tried to attack the S.H.I.E.L.D. base when she came over for a visit.</p><p>It was funny remembering him telling her how the lawyer’s face twisted while Clint and Laura talked about selling the old houses they had together and that they should buy a new one nearer to the compound so the kids had somewhere to go.</p><p>And then, the whole Ultron thing happened and Pietro was put on a coma so he could heal from his injuries. But now, he wouldn’t wake up. Helen said he had all readings of a healthy brain, that if you talked with him while she was doing the readings he could listen by the way his brain lit up. But he wouldn’t wake up.</p><p>It took a tool on Wanda, seeing her brother right there and not being able to use her magic because of how unstable she had been. Having Vision by her side helped, but it wasn’t like he could do miracles.</p><p>Helen had been trying to find a way to make him wake up, and the last time she tried she had to intubate the poor boy because his lungs started to collapse. Clint would go there to visit him at least once a week, and with the whole accords already putting a pressure on the team, she could see him being even more tired of everything.</p><p>Wanda was being kept in the farm house for the time being. The last time someone talked about Pietro near her, the kitchen oven exploded, and Steve took quite the blow since he was the one by the appliance.</p><p>He had already healed, but Wanda herself thought that she should stay away for some time.</p><p>Natasha took a deep breath, opening her bedroom door and seeing the place empty. She just moved to the bathroom, leaving the file she was carrying by the bed.</p><p>When she left the shower, Pepper was already in the bedroom, reading the file Natasha left behind. She put it away when she saw the redhead, and they exchanged smiles.</p><p>“I put Morgan and Abbie in their beds already,” the blonde said, getting nearer to Natasha and circling her arms on the woman’s neck.</p><p>“And Harley?” Natasha asked, putting her hands on Pepper’s waist.</p><p>“He’s in the lab with Tony,” Pepper said, leaving a kiss on Nat’s cheek. “I sent Steve down there to put the two of them in bed.”</p><p>“Good, at least Steve can deal with them himself.” Natasha let her head fall on Pepper’s shoulder, sighing.</p><p>“Did something happen?” Pepper questioned, squeezing a little her arms around Natasha’s neck.</p><p>“The boy talked, and I’m not sure I was prepared to hear it.” Natasha said, gulping down the lump that was forming on her throat. She got her head up, looking at Pepper in the eyes while touching their foreheads together. “I passed through a lot in the past, but he got it a hundred times worse.”</p><p>Pepper sighed, getting her arms back to her side and leaving one of her hands to fall to Natasha’s waist while the other cupped her fincée’s face.</p><p>“Do you want to sleep? Have a fresh start tomorrow?” Pepper asked, and Natasha just nodded while letting her face fall in the blonde’s hand. “You can postpone this conversation with Tony and the others, let it be on Monday instead of tomorrow.”</p><p>“I’ll see tomorrow, don’t worry darling.” Natasha gave Pepper a smile, and the woman gave her another one back.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Sunday arrived as a ray of sunshine. The day was clear, and Christine agreed on taking Pyotr for a walk.</p><p>He said to the woman that she could call him by that name when she woke up a few hours after Natasha left. It didn’t bother him, <i>he was used to it.</i></p><p>They were going against the tree line, walking arm by arm. There was a shadow on the place they were going, and Pyotr rejected the shoes she tried to give him. They were just walking on the grass, he could just clean his feet afterwards.</p><p>He had never done that, just taken a walk in silence and calm, not worried about anyone watching him like hawks. It was a good feeling, not having his senses overwhelmed twenty four hours of the day.</p><p>As they passed nearer to the building in a place the forest hadn’t been cut down just for construction purposes, Pyotr could hear the faint heartbeat coming from the place, even with the aids on. He knew who it was since Helen and the other doctor, Betty as she presented herself, went back to wherever they needed to get back to.</p><p>The city, probably.</p><p>“Who is it?” He asked Christine, not that loud. She gave him a look so he reformulated his question. “Who’s the silver haired guy?”</p><p>He already had his anwer, but he wanted to hear it from others.</p><p>“His name is Pietro, him and his twin sister are from Romania,” Christine began explaining. “There was a fight almost a year ago, against Ultron. He was shot, I did the surgery to remove the bullets and he was put in a coma to heal. Helen has been trying to wake him up, but her luck only has been decreasing.”</p><p>“Do you know the reason why he doesn’t wake up?” Pyotr asked.</p><p>Christine only shook her head, so they continued on that silence.</p><p>As they entered the building again, Pyotr stopped her by the door. The woman gave him a look and he extended his hand to her.</p><p>She put her gloved hand over his, still not understanding. He made a movement explaining that she could take the gloves off, so she did so. She kept eyeing him while she pocketed the gloves and laid one of her hands on top of his.</p><p>Pyotr took a deep breath, observing everything in a matter of two seconds. He got his other hand up, turning her hand around and drew a circle on her palm. He saw the faint light that it made, yellowish, but he knew she couldn’t see it the entire time she just observed.</p><p>He let her hand go, going in front of her to the elevator while she was still trying to understand what just happened.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for everyone that comments, I always open the comments just to get motivation of continuing. Thank you very much, have a good day.</p><p> </p><p>*Me, looking at everything.*</p><p>"We need to go deeper."</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. “It’s me, isn’t it?”</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hey, news flash? I’m sad.</p><p>I'm totally that vine "I'm taking nap, I'm taking nap right here... goodnight."</p><p>But I'm also happy because I found a job, I'm studying and bought a new laptop, so yeah.</p><p>*Me, writing one more time about trauma.* "Well, that was a mistake. *Lays down and cry.*</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As Pyotr let himself be taken again, he got up from the wet floor, confirming again that his clothes were dry.</p><p>It was a safe trip.</p><p>He looked around, seeing someone in the distance. Pyotr walked to the man, observing the faint colorful glow all around the place.</p><p>He had some time.</p><p>As he got himself nearer, he identified the silver hair as being the right person. He stopped right besides the man, touching his shoulder to call up his attention.</p><p>Pietro jumped slightly before turning around and looking at Pyotr, a sigh leaving the man's lips.</p><p>“I found it,” Pyotr said.</p><p>Pietro just nodded, accepting the help to get up from the floor that Pyotr offered.</p><p>The two followed a path, walking maybe what seemed seconds, minutes and hours, all at the same time.</p><p>Things happened differently here, and he wasn't ready to question.</p><p>Pyotr opened the door, letting Pietro get in first and closing it after he passed too. Pietro stayed nearer to the door while Pyotr went to get what he needed.</p><p>The stacks and stacks of file cabinets, going up and up and disappearing in the darkness that was the more upper ones.</p><p>He wouldn't dare to go too forward in the room either. He could see the single file cabinet with four drawers in the darkness, close to the back wall.</p><p>He got near one of the file cabinets, taking a deep breath before he opened a drawer and used it as a step to go up.</p><p>Pyotr did it many many times before he got just besides the one he was looking for. He opened the drawer that extended a meter in front of him.</p><p>His right hand passed over all the files before it stopped on one. Pyotr pulled out the file, opening in and confirming it was the right one.</p><p>He threw the file in the air, seeing all the pages scatter and fall to the floor, each of them getting together and forming a whole on the ground below.</p><p>Pietro just observed everything happening, so he got interested when the whole in the ground was formed. Pyotr called the man's attention by whistling, and then pointing to the whole.</p><p>Pietro shook his head, so Pyotr jumped from where he was.</p><p>It was a long fall, but it wasn't painful. At least he knew it wouldn't be. He fell directly on the whole and looked up just in time to see Pietro jumping after him with his eyes closed.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Harley was ready to enter the kitchen when he saw that his dad was already there. The boy could never understand Steve's motivation for that.</p><p>He stopped by the counter, just observing the other blonde doing a stack of blueberry pancakes that could probably feed around three people, but that Harley knew it would feed just dad and papa.</p><p>It still felt strange from time to time remembering that his real dad maybe was still out there, being the asshole he was to leave his mother with two children behind. He didn't feel that much anger towards the man anymore actually. Tony's first priority was always making sure he went to therapy, and Harley loved his therapist by this point for hearing him talking about nonsense all the time.</p><p>“Are you going to do some for me too, dad?” Harley asked, which made the blonde look at him with a little side eye.</p><p>“Is there a day that I leave you hungry, son?” Steve asked, a little smile appearing in his lips. “Come here give me a proper good morning, you pest.”</p><p>Harley laughed, going to the other side of the counter to hug the man.</p><p>“Oh, my old man can't get up properly without a proper <i>good morning</i>?” The boy said, hugging Steve a little sideways since the man was still doing pancakes on the stove.</p><p>“Yes, your old man is very old, and he likes his good mornings with a lot of maple syrup,” Steve said, laughing a little while he returned Haley's hug. “Get yourself some pancakes and eat. I want you to wake up your sisters after, ok?”</p><p>Harley just nodded and went to grab himself a plate. As he finished serving himself, he looked in the direction of the living room just for a second and realized that Natasha was there, sleeping in the armchair.</p><p>The woman didn't like to have other people seeing her sleep, and she only let herself sleep in front of others when something happened.</p><p>She explained once to Harley that she didn't like being watched when she was vulnerable, like in her sleep, but if it ever happened of her sleeping in front of someone, it probably meant she was just thinking too much to realize what she was doing.</p><p>But Harley already knew that she let herself sleep in front of others when something bad happened. He overheard once she and uncle Clint talking about it when Nat fell asleep on a chair on the balcony, while she and his uncle were just appreciating a good cold wind on a hot day.</p><p>He left his plate on the counter, going to the living room and crouching down in front of the armchair his mom was sleeping in. It was strange to also call her mom when he had his own back in Tennessee, but he got used to it with time.</p><p>Both the women took care of him like a son, so he felt justified in not feeling bad.</p><p>“Mom,” he called to Natasha, letting his hand touch her knee lightly.</p><p>She shook a little when she opened her eyes, realizing it was just Harley there. She sighed, bending her body forward a little, just enough to leave a kiss on the boy's forehead and looking at him with a smile.</p><p>“Good morning, darling,” she said, ruffling his hair.</p><p>“'Morning, mom,” he answered back.</p><p>The two got up from where they were and went to the kitchen, Harley pulling a chair for himself while Natasha went to make coffee.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Pyotr left the room behind, going to the staircase and up the stairs until he reached the right floor. He went to the bedroom he was staying in, seeing Christine sitting by the window while reading a book.</p><p>He just went over to the bed, sitting there and closing his eyes. The room was just at a good temperature to be enjoyable.</p><p>“How was the little stroll you went on?” Christine asked, closing the files she was holding and looking at him.</p><p>Pyotr just shrugged, taking one of his hands and passing in on the back of his head. The hair there had grown again since no one was constantly cutting it. It was comforting to feel the hair there.</p><p>“I’m going to the kitchen, make something,” Christine said, getting up from her chair and leaving the room.</p><p>Pyotr got up from the bed and went after her, following all the way to the kitchen on the first floor. He stayed by the threshold while she went to make food. It took some time, but eventually he entered the kitchen and pulled a chair for himself at the table, just observing the woman working around all of the pots and pans and multiple spoons.</p><p>She seemed good at that considering she was a doctor that survived her university time almost entirely in instant noodles and a few other simple dishes.</p><p>She put the food in two plates, putting one in front of Pyotr and sitting down with the other in front of him. She passed him a spoon, and he gladly grabbed it. They exchanged a look, Pyotr taking a look at the food and then again at her. They stared at each other for a few more seconds before Christine sighed.</p><p>“We can go for a walk later, before sunset,” she said.</p><p>Pyotr grabbed the spoon properly and started to eat the food. Christine just sighed one more time before she started to eat her own food.</p><p>As they finished, the woman put everything on the dishwasher and the two left the kitchen arm by arm, walking up the building until they stopped by the silver haired guy’s bedroom. Christine asked for Pyotr to stay outside while she did her thing, and he just complied.</p><p>It took around half an hour for the woman to finish whatever she needed to do, and Pyotr just waited outside, looking at the forest. The day was ok, the sun was mostly being covered by the clouds and he could hear birds chirping amongst the trees.</p><p>Pyotr looked back at the door right when Christine opened it, catching a glimpse of the end of the bed before she closed the door.</p><p>The two continued up to Pyotr’s room and stayed there, the boy slept for a while and the doctor read her books.</p><p>Around seven in the afternoon, after they ate something for dinner, the sun was still up. Christine opened the door and the two went to the outside. Peter was holding the woman’s arm, the two taking a stroll until they reached the tree line and went to the side, walking side by side with the trees.</p><p>They mostly stayed in silence, Christine only making a comment or two until they reached that same part of the other day, the part where they were a little more near the back of the building and Pyotr could see that same window.</p><p>“Have you ever lost someone?” Pyotr asked in a whisper. Christine stopped walking, which also made him stop. She looked at him while he kept his eyes directed at the window on the second floor.</p><p>He already knew her answer, but sometimes listening to people talking about things made him understand much more than anything else ever could help him understand.</p><p>“Yeah, a few years ago,” she started. They resumed their walk, Pyotr moving his eyes down to the green grass under his feet. “I lost my mom five years ago, and around two years ago I was dating someone. He got a bit out of control and I thought I had lost him to his craziness. And then, he came back around a year ago, totally changed, but I knew he wasn’t the same. So I started dating his sister.”</p><p>Pyotr stopped, looking at her a little lost. The second she looked at him she started laughing, holding her stomach with her free arm.</p><p>“Isn’t it… awkward?” He asked.</p><p>“No, not at all.” She took a deep breath and composed herself again. “I went through all of the stages of grief I could about losing Stephen. We had been friends way before we became colleagues in the hospital and started dating. Not having him around took a toll on my health. There were times I forgot to eat, and I would do any surgeries no one was doing. I threw myself so hard at work that it hurt when I finally fell.”</p><p>She pulled the two of them and they resumed their walk one more time, going away from the building when the tree line opened again.</p><p>“When he came back, I thought I did everything for nothing, mourned I mean,” she continued. “He was back, there was no reason for me to act the way I was acting. This time, I was the one doomed. I fell out of pace, let others go in front of me and lost my place. It was around the same time I did Pietro’s surgery, so him not waking up after it makes me think sometimes I’m guilty for it. When I heard Helen was the one keeping him, I asked her for an internship, just so I could lift myself again.”</p><p>As they passed near a tree, Pyotr heard a little bird singing in one of its branches. It was beautiful sound to appreciate.</p><p>“Surgeries weren’t giving me the thrill that they gave me before.” Pyotr came to focus on the woman again, lifting his head and looking ahead of them. “Helen accepted taking me while she was doing some of her research on skin, so I have been here for the time being. Then, a few months ago, Stephen’s sister, Donna, called me. She was entering her second year of residency in the same hospital I was working on and she asked me for help. Then, we started dating.”</p><p>Pyotr nodded in acknowledgement, looking at Christine.</p><p>“Do you see each other much?” Pyotr asked.</p><p>“We talk on the phone when she has time. I go to the city at least once a week and Helen lets me stay here the rest of the time,” she started to explain. “I don’t mind not seeing her too much, both of us have a lot of things to do, we’re always working. We have dates when she’s not working and Helen doesn’t care if I leave for a day or two since we're mostly studying.”</p><p>“It’s me, isn’t it?” He asked. Christine looked at him, questioningly. “You are studying me, trying to find out what they did,” he stated.</p><p>Christine stopped, and Pyotr let go of her arm. He turned to her, looking at her in the eyes.</p><p>“I know that Doctor Ross studies genetics, Doctor Palmer. I heard her and Doctor Cho talking yesterday. The aids just decreased the range of my hearing. If I want to, I can hear everything happening around 200 miles from here, easily.”</p><p>He kept looking in her eyes, seeing her face get pink-ish.</p><p>“That’s what they did to me,” he started to explain. “They increased every single one of my senses, one by one. They used to take scissors and purposefully cut my eardrums off and watch them heal just so they could cut them again. Doctor Orlova took a letter knife once and stabbed me in both of my eyes. She kept looking at them until they healed so she could send me on a mission not even an hour after I got my sight back.”</p><p>And now, the woman seemed to be getting pale.</p><p>“Orlova would put needles on my arm and inject me with all of the things she wanted to test. Most of them didn’t catch, but some others did. That’s how she studied. I was her lab rat. She created an entire program around me just so she could keep testing and testing and testing, anything she wanted.”</p><p>Pyotr gave a step forward and watched Christine give one backwards.</p><p>“And by this point, I don’t care, Christine. I don’t care if you study me, if you try your best to find out what exactly that woman did to me. I’m just tired of everything. And I know I will never be normal because of what she did, because of what my step-father did. I’m tired of being watched, of having every single one of my steps written down. I know you have a microphone on you right now.”</p><p>He extended his hand, grabbing her pulse lightly. She jumped anyways, and he wasn’t really carrying. He lifted her pulse, the sleeve of her cardigan falling a little down and revealing the watch on her pulse.</p><p>“You should do a watch that does less noise, Stark, because this one is a nosy one,” he said against the watch, letting go of her arm right after.</p><p>He put his hands on the pockets of the pants he was wearing and turned around, deciding to just go back inside. He entered the building, leaving Christine behind.</p><p>[...]</p><p>The next few days were quiet. Pyotr mostly stayed in his room, either sleeping or looking at the horizon through the window.</p><p>He felt bad that he said all of that to Christine, he didn’t want to scare the woman or something, but he was tired and cranky. He hadn’t been sleeping much the other days, he was trying to keep himself awake because of Christine, since she kept herself by his side most of the time.</p><p>He slept a full 24 hours after he got inside the building on Sunday. And even after he got up, he was still tired. Someone entered and left the room by some point. He knew Christine entered once or twice to leave food, food he didn’t eat.</p><p>Pyotr would let his mind go sometimes, wander through memories that weren’t his just so he could forget for a few hours. It was bad, and he was closing himself again.</p><p><i>He was used</i> to closing himself, not let anyone in his little bubble. But he was destructive, he remembered times he would ask Spider without thinking much if he could just jump from somewhere high, let the adrenalin run free.</p><p>Pyotr needed help, and he didn’t know how to ask people for it. He was always just internalizing it, letting the silence fall from his mouth. The only words out from his mouth for years had been the <i>ready to comply</i> from Spider. Pyotr wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t move around, wouldn’t let his thoughts out.</p><p>Some time passed, and he just lost himself on the days. He knew Natasha came once and left when Helen asked her to just <i>give it time</i>.</p><p>So when he finally came back to earth, both of his feet firm on the ground, he ran to the bathroom and vomited whatever was in his stomach. It was mostly water, which just made everything even more gross for him.</p><p>His body slumped against the wall behind him while he tried to take deep breaths. It took some time, but he got the hang of it.</p><p>The bedroom door opened and just a second later he could hear Christine’s heartbeat by the bathroom door. She put one of her hands on his shoulder, and he leaned on it a bit. He hated that he was becoming dependent in some way, but he was already so fucked up that this seemed to be the least of his problems.</p><p>“I’ll make you some ginger tea,” she said. “Can you get yourself back in the bedroom?”</p><p>Pyotr nodded slightly, letting her leave the room and walk down the corridor.</p><p>He gave himself one more minute or two before he used the wall as support so he could get up, not feeling much strength coming so he could move <i>normally</i>.</p><p>He flopped on the bed just in time for Christine to see him and laugh while she carried the tea cup. She sat down by the end of the bed while he got himself up and sat down properly, accepting the cup when she offered him.</p><p>The two of them just stayed there, looking out the window while Pyotr drank down the whole cup.</p><p>“I’m sorry, for the other day,” he said, extending the cup back to her. “I shouldn’t have told you those things.”</p><p>“It’s ok,” she answered, grabbing the cup and holding it in between her hands. “I have seen a lot of things in my days of being a full time surgeon, I think I just wasn’t ready to hear everything you said. I don’t think I could ever be ready, actually.”</p><p>“No one’s ever ready to hear everything,” Pyotr commented.</p><p>They looked at each other, Christine having a sincere look in her face. One of those that told you everything you wanted to know but also nothing.</p><p>“I didn’t know about the watch,” she said, getting her hands up to let him see her pulse. There was only a little chain in on the place. “Donna gave me this a week ago on a date. I think she was just trying to say thank you since I let her stay in the apartment I have near the hospital, and she doesn’t need to pay rent, but it's ok.”</p><p>“It’s a…” He stopped for a second to search for the right word. “... pretty gesture.”</p><p>Christine smiled, lowering her head while keeping her eyes on the chain. A few seconds later, she seemed to shake herself from any thoughts and looked at Pyotr again, still holding her smile.</p><p>“Can you handle eating something?” She asked. Pyotr just shrugged, not really sure. “I’ll make you some potato soup then.”</p><p>[...]</p><p>Natasha and Tony were thrown on the common area sofa, the man's head in the spy's lap while she played with his hair.</p><p>They had been there for que some time already. Time seemed to be passing differently on that day. Or they could even say that it had been strange since they heard the audio from the watch Stark gave Doctor Palmer as a present.</p><p>The doctor had since returned the watch, and gave the man a stern look while she herself looked to be a little beaten up by life.</p><p>He had to admit that he could've just entered the security feed of Helen's building to get all the audio he wanted from conversations or whatever, but he had been on an all-nighter when he had the idea of putting the microphone on the watch happened and he hadn't slept properly before he gave her the watch.</p><p>Hearing Pyotr say what he said, both times, with Natasha there by his side and directly to Doctor Palmer… Tony was a little shaken by everything. He never stopped to think about torture, it wasn’t something he had in mind or even the thought process to think about that stuff, and now he was feeling bad.</p><p>He hadn’t entered his workshop since that day, almost two weeks ago, and he was trying to always have someone by his side. His mind made a direct line to his time in Afghanistan right after the whole bomb accident and he didn’t know how to end the call.</p><p>He knew Steve was worried, Tony would stop once in a while to think about the accident and just accept that it happened and that he didn’t need to dig it up. But now, he was digging everything like a mad man.</p><p>In the middle of the week, Secretary Ross had sent another version of the accords for revision, and Tony sent directly to one of the lawyers. He didn’t have the mind to even look at the papers and told the lawyer to just give him the revised version next week.</p><p> He remembered the moments after the accident, how lost he was. After the other accident, the one that destroyed his house in Malibu, he made a compromise with Pepper. The two reached the conclusion that Tony needed an heir, a proper one. His relationship with the Keeners had just started and he couldn’t just put Harley as his direct heir.</p><p>Him and Pepper did an IVF and from there Morgan came. It had been five years already, his daughter was growing with the family and Violet Keener sent both of her children to be with them, study in better schools while she still finished her contract with the place she works at.</p><p>Tony offered to just pay so she could come to New York with her children, but she said that it would be just one more year and her contract would be done. It had been six months already and he could see how Harley and Abbie were buzzing to have their mother come to New York.</p><p>Then the accords came and everything became a mess. And now, Tony was stuck on his sofa, not being able to think much about things.</p><p>“You can go visit him, you know,” Natasha whispered. Tony looked at her with a blank face. “You can go there and apologize for spying on him, have a proper talk. The children are coming just after tomorrow, and they are staying. Their classes ended and they all have the most incredible grades ever.”</p><p>She passed her hand and used her nails to brush against his scalp, which made him shiver. She could so easily kill him and he wasn’t even mad.</p><p>“Harley is going to his last year in school in September and will probably want to do a summer class, and having his father figure sulking on the sofa won’t make him happy. He’ll get mad at you as much the girls will be.”</p><p>Tony just nodded, and Natasha sighed.</p><p>“I’ll take you to Helen’s building tomorrow, no matter what you try to pull to not go,” she whispered in his ear.</p><p>And that was a threat to fear.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This fanfic is literally a mix of the entire MCU timeline, so I'm doing my best to organize all of the events on the way they are going in my head. Peter himself doesn't know about a lot of things from the outside world, so next chapter will be me trying to integrate him with more people.</p><p>Thank you for reading.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. “Пётр(Pyotr),”</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I just started a new job and it's killing me.</p><p>I'm trying my best to keep writing also, but the story is also kicking my ass. I have to admit crying when I was deciding about some things that are coming in the next chapters.</p><p>Enjoy, I guess...</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As Tony stopped the car in front of the building, he looked out the window to the trees and sighed. He turned his head to the passenger side, and Natasha was there, just looking at him with a smirk.</p><p>“You are not leaving, Tin Man.” She opened her door and left the car, and for a second he considered just speeding off, but he decided to not piss her off.</p><p>He got out of the car, taking a look around and going around his car, entering the building besides her.</p><p>The lobby was just an empty space, an echoed space without any furniture. He said once that he could call an interior design for that part of the place, but Helen just told him not to and that she liked the empty lobby.</p><p>Him and Nat went to the elevator, even with the stairs right there. He was lazy, ok? He had been using his energy to sulk on the common space living room while eating popcorn for almost two weeks.</p><p>They stopped by the floor that Nat said it was the floor where <i>Pyotr</i> was staying at and went down the corridor.</p><p>The door was closed, but Natasha knocked before opening, just to find that no one was there. They looked at each other, Natasha taking a look around the bedroom before getting out and closing the door again.</p><p>“Maybe they’re in the kitchen?” She asked, not even sure herself.</p><p>“FRIDAY,” Tony said, getting his pulse up to his watch. A little light lit up. “Can you scan the place and see if you can find them?”</p><p>The watch let out a beep and a few seconds later, FRIDAY’s voice came briefly through the tiny speakers.</p><p>“They’re outside by the left, almost behind the building, Boss,” she said.</p><p>Tony and Nat took the elevator back to the ground floor, following their way through the front door and going through the nearest side of the building.</p><p>As they got to the back, they saw Chrstine sitting under one of the trees by the tree line with a book in her hands, and Pyotr was just there, lying in the grass. They got closer and they could see that the boy’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be asleep.</p><p>Christine put the bookmark in place before she closed her book, leaving it on her lap just in time for Nat and Tony to stop near them. It was the first time he was seeing the boy in person, and he seemed to have something about him that Tony didn’t see before.</p><p>He seemed so calm just laid down in the grass that Tony questioned himself why he never tried to do that, not even once. It seemed so obvious that it was a relaxing thing.</p><p>“How can I help you?” Christine asked, calling up Tony’s attention.</p><p>He looked at Natasha and the woman just gave him a look, <i>the look</i>. He gulped whatever pride he may have left and looked at Christine again.</p><p>“I came to apologise, in person, for the microphone.” He sighed before continuing. “It wasn’t my best move, and I apologise for it. I hadn’t been sleeping well and thought it would be the apex of my genius. I’m sorry.”</p><p>Christine had a look in her face like the sun was shining directly in her face, and Pyotr hadn’t moved an inch.</p><p>“I never heard you say you apologise for something in my life, and not so many times at once. And the nurses where I worked used to fawn over every bit of interviews and public appearances that you did,” she said, a snicker in her lips.</p><p>“Should’ve recorded it,” Pyotr mumbled, seeming to be half asleep instead of completely under. Nat was holding a laugh and Christine was maintaining that sly smile in her face.</p><p>“There’s nothing to worry about, Miss Potts asked me to record it, so I did,” FRIDAY chimed in from Tony’s clock, and his expression turned into an offended one. “It’s already saved in her private folder.”</p><p>“I create you and that’s how you repay me?” Tony asked, looking at his watch.</p><p>Christine was now full on laughing with Natasha and the boy just looked like he had finally fallen asleep for sure. Tony looked at them with a blank expression, which made Christine try to say something but just continue to laugh instead.</p><p>It took them a few minutes to recover, and when they finished, Christine was breathing deeply while trying to hold herself from another laughing attack.</p><p>“You didn't come here just because of that, did you?” Christine asked, and Tony could just sigh in his slight defeat.</p><p>“No, I didn't,” Tony said. He pursed his lips for a second before continuing. “I was thinking about inviting you guys to the compound, for the weekend. My–” He looked at Natasha for a second and got a finger up, pointing both to him and Natasha while he continued. “Our children are coming up from the city since their classes ended and all.”</p><p>“I’m very sorry, but I can’t,” Christine said, a sad smile on her face. “I’m going down for the weekend, Helen is coming tomorrow, and Saturday morning the nurse that works for Helen is coming up to stay the weekend and keep an eye in Pietro and Pyotr while the two of us do our own things.”</p><p>“If Pyotr wants, he can go to the compound for the weekend, leave a little less work for the nurse,” Natsha said. “We can keep an eye on him.”</p><p>“Like you did before?” Pyotr asked mumbling, and both Tony and Natasha let out inaudible sighs. He lifted one of his arms and rubbed his fingers on his eyes before opening them and looking a little to the side, to Christine. “I’ll probably just lay down and sleep, the nurse doesn’t need to care that much about me.”</p><p>“You can go with them,” Christine started, taking the book from her lap and putting it on the grass. “You can sleep in the compound, I’m sure it won’t be a problem. You can meet the others from the team. Maybe even talk with them.”</p><p>“I’ll probably just sleep,” he reiterated again. “I’m tired, I don’t need to meet new people.”</p><p>“If you come with us, we can ask Barnes to make you a batch of sweets,” Natasha offered.</p><p>Pyotr only gave her a look before laying his head on the grass again.</p><p>“I don’t like sweet things,” he said.</p><p>There was an uncomfortable silence before Tony decided to speak up.</p><p>“Then we can make you the most bland thing in the universe and call it even.”</p><p>Pyotr opened his eyes and got part of his upper body to rest on his elbows. He blinked a few times, squeezing his eyelids once or twice before looking at Tony.</p><p>“Why do you want someone who can kill your entire team to sleep under the same roof as you?” The boy asked. Tony shifted his weight to his other foot, letting his head fall a little to the right.</p><p>“Killing my team won’t do you good considering you already have Hydra’s target on your back for killing their people and running away,” Tony commented, and for a second he could swear he saw Pyotr make an uncomfortable face before going back to his bland one. “We’re trying to protect you here, ok? We’re in the middle of a lot of shit, and now we have two things to report back to the pain in the ass we call Secretary Ross. If you really don’t want help, you can just say and we’ll give you back to him.”</p><p>Pyotr moved himself, sitting on the grass and keeping his eyes low. He was considering his options. Maybe be thrown somewhere to let himself rot or at least try to live a little. He wasn’t sure how to live, in the best sense of saying it, but he could at least try, couldn’t he? Maybe he could just grab a few memories more here and there and finally focus his study on how to live a proper life.</p><p>Maybe one day he would get better and get himself courage to just go down the hall and open those three drawers that, at the same time that it pushed him away, called for him like a distant dream.</p><p>While he was lost in his own head, Christine was reprimanding Tony for saying what he said. It wasn’t the way to treat him when they finally got progress into having a proper talk with the boy and that could backpedal everything. Tony was trying to defend himself while Natasha just observed.</p><p>The boy was weighing his options. He was weighing his options to see maybe what would be the best option for himself. He was weighing if staying here could be worse than being sent back to Ross. It hurt in some way, seeing him so easily doing that like it wouldn’t change his life completely.</p><p>She could see herself in him, seeing bad things as good options instead of seeing them as the real thing that they are. In the end, she knew she couldn’t help him choose, it was something he had to do on his own, but she knew she had to help in some way.</p><p>Natasha couldn’t just let him fall into hell for finally making a decision in his life.</p><p>“Пётр(Pyotr),” she called him. He got his head back up, looking the woman in the eye. “Здесь у вас есть выбор, но мы хотим вам помочь. Мы не хотим, чтобы вы уезжали, мы хотим помочь вам во всем, что вам нужно.(You have a choice here, but we want to help you. We don’t want you to go away, we want to help you with whatever you need.)”</p><p>He lowered his head again, sighing. He knew it was his choice, and he was weighing everything. He wanted to just spend the weekend without thinking he was better off dead.</p><p>But he didn't need anything from anyone, not really. The way the Romanoff was saying that was strange to his ears. He didn't need help from anyone, at most people usually <i>needed</i> his, and needed in just the way of saying it since they were just orders, orders he had to follow to not die.</p><p>And the other side of it was that he was tired, really tired, he was feeling like he was going to shut down in just an hour and he didn't know if he was going to be awake during the weekend.</p><p>By that point, Christine and Tony had gone quiet and the three adults were just observing the boy.</p><p>“You can give us an answer tomorrow, before the nurse comes,” Tony said, Pyotr getting his head up to look at him. “Helen can pass in the compound to leave you there or I can get Happy to come by when he comes from the city.”</p><p>Pyotr just nodded, throwing his body backwards in the grass again.</p><p>He wanted to take a bath, a cold one before he fell asleep.</p><p>He got up, going back to the building and leaving the three others behind.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Pyotr was waiting in front of the building. He slept for more than twelve hours the night before and Helen hadn’t come up to the building yet. </p><p>He was still tired, actually. He could feel pain coming and going all over his body and he thinks the only explanation he could get was that he was still healing. From what he didn’t know.</p><p>Memories didn’t come like the pain, sometimes he would see a thing or two that he knew weren’t part of the reality, but from memories instead.</p><p>Right on that moment, he was seeing someone in the tree line. He knew it was a memory because he could clearly see the wind blowing the trees all around the figure but it itself was just there, not moving, looking back at him.</p><p>It was a man, one he could swear he knew but he knew his brain was trying to push down because of the slight glitching of the image in front of his eyes.</p><p>The figure disappeared when a car appeared on the road and Pyotr gave his attention to the vehicle. It took less than a minute for it to stop just a few meters from the front door, a man he didn’t know getting out from the driver’s seat.</p><p>The man got near to the boy, Pyotr keeping his hands on the pockets of the pants he was wearing. He agreed with Christine that he was going to put on a pair of shoes, so she gave one to him that didn’t need lacing. According to the woman, they were called loafers, but he didn’t care much about that information to begin with.</p><p>“I’m Harold Hogan, but everyone calls me Happy,” the man presented himself, a forced small smile appearing in his lips, a smile that didn’t pass to his eyes. He was wary.</p><p>“Pyotr,” the boy said back.</p><p>They looked at each other for a moment before Happy went back to the car and opened the back door, making a slight movement with his head, something unconscious that said to Pyotr that he should get in.</p><p>So, he did so. He did his very best to keep his hand to himself and any skin far away from the man. Happy closed the door and entered in the car again, driving away just in time to catch Helen when she was arriving.</p><p>They exchanged pleasantries for a second, but Pyotr’s eyes were focused somewhere else. On the passenger seat was an unknown woman, and something in him said he should know who it was. But the problem was the man in the back seat. The same as his memory had been spilling out.</p><p>The unknown-but-known woman was looking at the cellphone she had in hands, not really paying attention to anything. The man was looking directly at Pyotr, but he knew it was just a memory. Half the man’s back was sinked in the backseat.</p><p>As they drove away, Pyotr looked back at the car for a second to see that both the women were alone in the car and the backseat was empty.</p><p>It took them some time to arrive where they were going, but when they arrived, he could see why the name <i>compound</i>. The place was huge, and there were some gardners still working, but he knew they would go away in less than an hour.</p><p>Pyotr heard them working sometimes when he was awake, they are quite loud, and even more being this close.</p><p>He could hear that the voices coming from inside the building were a bit muffled, so he just tuned out. He could hear what they were saying if he focused just a little, but he wasn’t feeling up to the task.</p><p>The car stopped by the door of one of the buildings, Pyotr opening the door himself this time around and getting out. Happy just said he needed to go and just a few seconds later the man got out of there with the vehicle.</p><p>He was alone there for around a minute, just looking at the grass when he felt someone coming. Pyotr already knew it was Natasha, so he didn’t even turn around. The woman stopped by his side, observing the grass with him before trying to instinctually get her hand to the side and touch the boy in the shoulder.</p><p>He ducked from the hand, giving the woman a look when she felt strange her hand didn’t touch anything. She sighed, seeming to realize what she had just done and just made a head sign for him to follow her to pretend like nothing happened.</p><p>The place was a little bit of a maze, but nothing Pyotr knew he could get lost on. A Hydra base maybe he could get lost at first, but nothing like some <i>brainwashing and repetitive walking</i> couldn’t help.</p><p>They arrived at what seemed to be a shared space, some new faces here and there throughout the place. A blonde man approached, throwing a dish towel over his shoulder while presenting himself.</p><p>“Steve Rogers, pleasure to meet you.”</p><p>“Pyotr,” he responded, short and straight to the point.</p><p>He nodded, going back to whatever he was doing. Pyotr knew him, it was actually a little impossible to not know him since he would hear all the time about <i>the most patriotic thing that America has ever done</i> all throughout the bases he lived in.</p><p>He knew many many scientists who were trying to replicate the serum, all the time and failing tentative after tentative. Pyotr knew the reason why it was always going wrong, but he wasn’t going to say anything. If he said anything he would be punished, but he was even more scared about what they could do if they had the serum in their hands.</p><p>Next came another man. He was just sitting on the sofa, watching the television. He looked back and gave him a curt nod while presenting himself as Sam Wilson.</p><p>“Scott called earlier,” Steve said, pulling everyone's attention to himself. “Him and Hope are bringing Cassie to stay the week.”</p><p>“Cassie is not moving schools next year, is she?” Natasha asked, sitting on the counter to watch Steve mixing something. The over was on, heating up.</p><p>“Brighton is also a very good school, Natasha.” Steve let out a laugh, pulling a baking tray and pouring the thing he was mixing on it. “And for her it's better that she stays there, she has a scholarship and according to Scott she has a friend there.”</p><p>“I just feel she's alone there,” the woman commented, getting up and rounding the counter, grabbing the baking tray and putting it on the over while Steve grabbed more ingredients from the cabinets to seemingly do another thing. “Harley is in Midtown on Queens, the girls are in East Tudor by Manhattan and she's down in Staten Island on Brighton.”</p><p>“She could even be in the Bronx at Kingsbridge, I just care that she's in a good school and doing what she likes.” Steve got a pair of scissors, cutting the top of the bag and poured out the flour on a clean bow.</p><p>Pyotr got himself nearer to the counter, just observing him. Natasha had leaned against where the coffee machine was and crossed her arms, just looking at Steve and ignoring that Pyotr was even there.</p><p>“Scott said she even got herself in the debate team and her school won the regionals.” Steve cracked a few eggs on the bow and mixed everything while pouring milk over it.</p><p>“Harley's team won the regional Decathlon competition,” Nat commented, going to the fridge and grabbing a container there. By that point, Pyotr had already found himself a seat by the counter, but he kept his hands in his pockets. “They're going to the nationals right by the start of his classes again.”</p><p>"That 's good.” Natasha passed the bow of frozen strawberries she had been finishing cutting to Steve, who put it to the side while he peed another mixture in another baking pan.</p><p>There was a silence while the two worked together in the kitchen. Sam got up at some point and opened a side door on the room, going down what seemed to be a corridor.</p><p>Tony soon arrived when Steve and Nat were cleaning up, pulling himself a chair by the counter and giving Pyotr a smile and getting his head down to the screen he had in his hands.</p><p>“Pepper 's coming tomorrow with the children, Scott, Hope and Cassie are staying for a week and Bruce sent a message that he's probably coming by dinner time tomorrow and is bringing people with him,” Tony said, looking up for a second I between words and looking down right after. He was reading about something entirely different on the thing in his hands and his mouth was saying a completely different thing.</p><p>“Did any other Asgardians confirm they're coming? We would need to prepare a lot of food, maybe I could even convince Bucky to come out to help,” Steve said.</p><p>Bucky.</p><p>He knew the nickname from somewhere. He heard it once. His mind blocked him from accessing anything in just a few seconds the information reached his ears.</p><p>No messing around then.</p><p>He felt a yawn come and he took one of his hands from his pockets and covered his mouth.</p><p>“You can go take a nap if you want,” Tony said, pulling the boy's attention to him. “Second room to the left,” the man pointed to the corridor he saw Sam going in.</p><p>Pyotr just got up from the chair and went to the place Tony indicated, hearing a few heartbeats here and there. He heard Sam’s and an unknown one in the room right in front of the one Tony said he could use.</p><p>He just closed the door behind him and took his shoes off, thanking he remembered to take a bath before leaving Helen’s building. He just laid down and fell asleep as fast as lightning.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Harley was buzzing. He was going back to the compound with the girls and he didn’t need to worry about classes for about two months. He still had to come back around two weeks before classes started so he could train with his Decathlon team for the competition, but besides that, he didn’t need to worry about anything.</p><p>He finished putting his books on his backpack, closing it just in time for his phone to ring. He saw his mom’s number pop on the screen, so he let go of the backpack and grabbed the phone, answering the call and putting it on speaker.</p><p>“Oi, mom!” He said loud, getting on top of his bed to grab his charger on the other side with his headphones.</p><p>“Hey, darling,” he heard, getting near his phone again. He grabbed the mobile in one hand while he tucked the charger in a side pocket of his backpack and let the headphones around his neck. “Just calling to hear how you are.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m good, mom.” He looked around his bedroom for a second before sitting down on the floor and taking a deep breath. “I’m going to the compound for the summer, taking Abbie and Morgan. Are you going to come visit? Do you want me to go to Rose Hill?”</p><p>“Oh, no, darling, there’s no need. I’ll probably ask Tony if he can bring me over to spend a week in New York with you guys.” He heard the woman sighing, a tired one. “Just five more months, darling.”</p><p>“Five months is too much.” Harley’s eyes fell to the ground, his brain trying to wire a few things here and there.</p><p>He just wanted his mom to be here, with him and Abbie and the rest of the family the two got themselves. But Violet Keener was a stubborn woman who just wanted to make sure she finished her job contract before she moved to New York.</p><p>It was a battle to even convince her that she could move to New York and it wouldn’t be a problem in anyone’s bank account, but they had to make the deal fair enough that she wouldn’t have even a reason to reject it.</p><p>So now, Harley and Abbie had to wait for their mom’s job contract to finish so they could have her all for themselves again, without worrying about anything holding the woman back.</p><p>“I know, baby, but it’s the deal.” Harley looked in the corner of his phone to the clock, letting his mom talk while he got up and grabbed his bags. “I’ll spend a week there during you summer, then in a few months I'll be all yours and Abbie’s.”</p><p>“Are you going to come see me in the competition?” He left his room behind, leaving the door open and going down the corridor.</p><p>“Yes, yes I will.”</p><p>Harley sighed, seeing a few bags already near the door by the elevator. He went there and left his own by the side, looking around the living room. There were some foods on the kitchen counter that Pepper probably prepared to take to the compound so they wouldn’t go to waste.</p><p>“I really hope you’re not lying, Miss Keener.”</p><p>“Oh, now I’m Miss Keener?” His mom tried her best offended voice. “What happened with the mom from a minute ago, plague?”</p><p>“I’m plague now?”</p><p>“If you keep calling me Miss Keener you’ll be my little bug again.”</p><p>Harley let out an outraged huff, looking at the corridor just in time to see Pepper appearing with a duffel bag in hands.</p><p>“I’m not a bug anymore, mom, I’m at least a house cat.”</p><p>“An annoying one.” Hayley let out another outraged huff, both Violet and Pepper laughing.</p><p>“A very annoying house cat, a lap one at last.” Pepper ruffled his hair, and Harley was trying his best to keep a straight face.</p><p>“Good morning, Pepper,” Violet called up, Pepper taking the phone from Harley’s hand and giving him her duffel bag in exchange.</p><p>“Good morning, Violet. How have you been?” Pepper went to the balcony, leaving Harley behind.</p><p>It took just a minute for Abbie to appear pulling her bag and Morgan’s, the other girl coming right after the blonde with what seemed to be a sad expression.</p><p>“Did something happen, Morgan?” Harley asked, kneeling down on the floor. The brunette got near him, wrapping her little arms in the boy’s neck.</p><p>“I’ll just miss my friends,” she said a little muffled on his shirt, and he could just sigh.</p><p>“I’ll also miss mine, but I know I’ll see them when classes start again,” he reassured her, looking at Abbie, who just seemed a little off too. “Are you okay, little ladybug?”</p><p>Abbie looked at him for a moment but lowered her head a few seconds a little after.</p><p>“I know Wanda is not in the compound, that she went to the farm,” Abbie commented, sitting on the floor next to her brother. He adjusted himself, keeping Morgan on his lap and hugging her with one arm while passing the other over Abbie’s shoulder, scooping her a little. “I wanted to see her, see how she’s doing.”</p><p>“Maybe we can ask Tony or Tasha to take us there, make a little visit,” Hayley said, and the blonde girl gave him a little smile while letting herself be a little squished in the boy’s side.</p><p>They heard the click of a camera and the three looked in the direction of it, seeing Pepper holding a laugh.</p><p>“I’m sending the picture to you, Vi,” Pepper said, making Abbie get up from the floor to go talk with her mom on the phone.</p><p>[...]</p><p>Abbie and Morgan slept almost all the way to the compound. Harley only took a five minute nap before getting his phone from his pocket so he could look over some of the messages from the Decathlon group.</p><p>It was mostly everyone telling everyone to have a good summer break and all that jazz, and MJ <i>just informing them</i> that she would kill who doesn’t appear in their next training session to the nationals, and everyone welcoming Liz back to the team.</p><p>The girl went to live with her aunt for around half an year after her dad went to jail, but she had just found a way to come back to NY and, as much as he knew, she was staying with Sally’s family until she found something more permanent.</p><p>There were also some messages from Harry, which he blushed a little when he saw them. He answered the other boy, putting down his phone when he realized they had arrived by the compound.</p><p>Harley woke both of his sisters up and they all got out of the car, Happy helping to bring all of the baggage inside.</p><p>As they were getting in, Tony stopped them before they entered the common room, Natasha coming right after him.</p><p>“We’re going to have a visitor for the weekend,” Tony announced, which just made Harley, the girls and Pepper frown while Happy seemed to remember something.</p><p>“Which visitor?” Pepper asked, Natasha stepping frontwards to take the bags from Pepper’s hands.</p><p>Natasha exchanged a look with Tony, and the two locked eyes for a second before Tony sighed and let them get in so he could explain.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*Just lay down on the floor and fall asleep.*</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. “James Barnes, but they call me Bucky,”</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm tired and in pain, help...</p><p>But I'm receiving my money in less than a week, so I'm kinda feeling good.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Do you know why this happened?” The silver haired man asked, and Pyotr shook his head in answer. “It just… It feels strange, but comforting at the same time.”</p><p>“Sometimes it does feel like that,” Pyotr said. “Things here are different, they move differently and there isn't much you can do besides maybe just wait.”</p><p>“I want to be with Clint,” Pietro said, laying down on the ground. Pyotr was sitting by his side, just observing their surroundings. “I know the children since he brought them to visit me, but I want to be there, moving around and goofing like a child with them.”</p><p>“Don't worry about that, I'm finding out what happened,” Pyotr affirmed to him, seeing a forced smile in Pietro's lips.</p><p>He wasn't that hopeful, but Pyotr was going down on this whole thing.</p><p>[...]</p><p>It was night when Pyotr woke up next. He could hear the sounds of the forest outside the window and a low murmur coming from inside the building. He wasn’t in his usual room, so it took him around a minute to remember he was in the compound, not the U-GIN building.</p><p>He got up from the bed, stretching his arms for a second before he opened the door and stepped out on the corridor.</p><p>Pyotr stopped by the door to the common room, seeing quite a lot of people sitting on the long dining table to the side that he saw earlier. There was a low conversation taking place, but he wasn’t paying attention.</p><p>He probably stayed there for quite a long time just observing, but the next time he blinked, they were all looking at him.</p><p>“Come eat something,” Tony said, making a hand gesture for him to come over while he talked.</p><p>Pyotr just shook his head, not really feeling comfortable by the amount of people that were there. He turned around, starting to go back to the bedroom he was previously in.</p><p>He stopped by the threshold, picking up a lonely heartbeat in the room right behind him. He turned to the door, realizing it was the person he heard that was with Sam before.</p><p>He just entered the bedroom he was staying in, closing the door behind himself and laying down again.</p><p>Pyotr focused his hearing on the outside, letting the sound of the trees moving with the wind lull him back to sleep.</p><p>[...]</p><p>It was morning when he next woke up, finally feeling a little better than before.</p><p>His body was just like that, sleeping days at a time being enough to refill his batteries just a little while his mind healed from something he wasn't sure of.</p><p>His eyes were focused on the ceiling when the door opened. He moved his head to the side, enough to see a little brunette girl entering and getting near the bed.</p><p>“Are you awake?” She asked, trying to whisper. Pyotr nodded, and she smiled a little. “Papa asked to get you to eat breakfast.”</p><p>Pyotr got himself propped on his arms while she ran out the door, leaving the door itself open behind her. He just sighed, getting up from the bed and leaving the room.</p><p>As he arrived in the common room, only Tony, Steve, the brunette girl and a strawberry blonde woman were there. The woman turned her head around and Pyotr recognized her from the dinner table. She was sitting next to Natasha that night.</p><p>“Hi,” The woman said, moving herself a little so she could look better at him. “I’m Pepper.”</p><p>“Pyotr,” he said, moving nearer to the kitchen counter.</p><p>“I’m making pancakes, do you want some?” Steve asked, pointing slightly to the little pile in a plate next to the stove. Pyotr just nodded, not really feeling hunger but the necessity of keeping his stomach with something to digest instead of trying to eat itself.</p><p>Tony went to the stove and separated four of the pancakes, going back to the counter and giving the boy the plate. He made a curt nod in the meaning of a thanks and grabbed one fork from the pile on top of the other plates nearby.</p><p>He sat by the counter, away from Pepper and the little girl, eating his food in silence while he just heard the others talking. As he finished, he gave the plate back to Tony, who was just there looking while Steve was making a big pile of pancakes.</p><p>He left the place, going through the building and finding himself outside, laying down on the first patch of grass he found. The sun was just there, illuminating the place just enough for it to be comfortable.</p><p>Pyotr just stayed there until a smell hit his nose, which made him sit on the grass and look around.</p><p>There was a circle in the grass more in front. A patch of grass in the form of an ornate circle. He got himself up, walking to the thing.</p><p>It was almost imperceptible, but there was a smell of ozone in the area, one that got stronger the nearer he got to the circle. There was also a faint blue and yellow light pairing over the grass in the area. Both of the colors mixed so well together that it seemed like it was green, but he could tell the difference between the two.</p><p>“You’re Pyotr then, uh?” He heard the voice coming from behind, which didn't catch him as ready as he wished to be. There was a dark blonde boy there, and Pyotr would dare to say both his and the boy’s age were near.</p><p>Pyotr just nodded, keeping the circle behind him on the back of his mind, something he could come and take a better look at later.</p><p>“Dad said you’re dangerous,” the boy continued, and Pyotr just stayed there, observing. “Mom said you killed people.”</p><p>“If you want me to say I didn’t and deny the atrocities I did, you’re a little late in my personal timeline,” Pyotr says, putting his hand on the pockets of his pants.</p><p>Him and the boy kept eye contact for a few seconds, and the boy was the first one to look away.</p><p>“Morgan said you left the common room, I saw you at dinner yesterday,” he commented. “I’m Harley, Harley Keener.”</p><p>“You already know me,” Pyotr commented, looking over Harley’s shoulder. There was a figure on the shadow near the glass doors. It was just his mind. He looked back at Harley.</p><p>Harley looked back for a second before focusing on Pyotr again, sighing.</p><p>“Why would mom not let me help her?” Harley murmured under his breath, looking down.</p><p>“Maybe you should ask her why instead of going snooping around, finding out about things you didn’t wish to know.” Harley looked up to Pyotr again, a slight frown on his face. “Everyone seems to think I’m a big mystery in this place, or something important. I can’t even remember things without feeling pain.”</p><p>Harley just nodded, the two of them looking around for a second.</p><p>Pyotr could hear a lot of things all around. Cars moving on a road very far away from there, a flock of birds flying. He could hear everyone’s heartbeats, just not identifying every single one of them since there were many unknown people all around the place. It wasn’t like in Helen’s building where he could identify all separate heartbeats to their respective owners.</p><p>“Do you want to go down to my dad’s lab?” Harley asked. “Maybe we could snoop around there and leave them,” Harley pointed to his back with his thumb, and Pyotr knew what he meant by the gesture, “a little less worried about you being outside here.”</p><p>Pyotr just nodded, taking a last look at the circle behind him before following Harley back to inside the building.</p><p>[...]</p><p>They did snoop around.</p><p>It took less than an hour for Tony to find them in his lab, but he decided to just not say anything and focus on his own work.</p><p>Harley was programming something on a computer, his fingers flying on the keyboard. He would type things only looking at his fingers, looking up sometimes to just look over the lines he just wrote to see if he didn’t write anything wrong.</p><p>Pyotr was just there, sitting with both of his hands in his pockets and observing both men working on their own things in silence. He felt for a second that maybe they would listen to music together, but were doing the little sacrifice since Pyotr was there, there with his fucking sensitive ears. </p><p>He wasn’t using the aids anymore and even left them behind in Helen's lab when he last visited her so she could take a new blood sample from him. He didn’t really feel the need to use them anymore, his ears not near to just explode all over again.</p><p>His right leg was shaking, his foot moving with a certain ritm. He was feeling like he was buzzing for the first time in forever with energy, energy he couldn’t point out where it came from. He wanted to do something, but wasn’t quite sure of what.</p><p>They must have been there for a few hours when a brunette he assumed was Morgan and a small blonde girl entered the lab, the two making a beeline to Harley.</p><p>“Dad asked if you’ll come eat lunch now or later,” the blonde asked, eyeing Pyotr for a second before looking back at Harley.</p><p>“I’ll go in a bit, I’m just finishing to write some lines,” Harley said, continuing to <i>click click</i> in the keyboard.</p><p>The blonde didn’t pay much attention and went to ask the same question, who just answered almost the same thing as Harley. The blonde gave a last look to Pyotr and left with Morgan going right behind her.</p><p>The two men seemed to finish what they were doing almost at the same time, just looking at each other and eyeing Pyotr for a second, the two making head signs identical to each other. It was a little bit creepy to watch it, but he just assumed that it was what happened when you live with someone constantly.</p><p>Pyotr himself could say he acquired a comfortable way of sitting on an armchair by just observing Doctor Palmer while she read her papers.</p><p>The three followed their way to the common room, finding only Steve, Pepper and the two girls waiting there. By the time they entered the place, Pyotr could see Sam leaving for the corridor and Natasha just passing the man and putting her hand on his shoulder for a second.</p><p>Steve and Pepper were talking on a low volume, the two seeming to wait while Morgan and the little blonde girl were already eating.</p><p>They all served themselves by the stove, Pyotr waiting to the side before going last. Sitting on the table was a strange occurrence for Pyotr. He was getting used to sitting with Doctor Palmer during meals, but having that many people there was putting a little bit of a strain on his stomach.</p><p>He decided to just leave a chair between him and Harley, but he could see some of them sneaking glances in his direction. At the same time that he felt he was welcome in the place he could feel that he wasn’t. It was a strange sensation.</p><p>He just ate the food on his plate in silence, going on a little faster pace with the action. He wanted to leave the room, he could feel a small wave of pain coming for his left leg and he just didn't want to be near people when it hit full force.</p><p>Pyotr knew the pain was going to go for his other leg sooner or later.</p><p>He thanked the air for the meal and left his plate on the sink, going back to the room Tony was letting him stay at.</p><p>As he hit the bed, the pain passed to his right leg and he just decided to not move and power his way through the pain. It was already moving up on his body and he just couldn’t do anything about it.</p><p>[...]</p><p>“What is really the problem?” Harley asked, looking at both Tony and Natasha. The three were alone in the lab, just looking at the camera feed from the room Pyotr was sleeping at.</p><p>Tony had contacted Doctor Cho when FRIDAY alerted him about the boy being in distress, and Helen could only say that she hadn’t found a cause for the pain Pyotr felt from time to time but she was looking into it. She said they could just let him fall asleep and he would be better later.</p><p>“Fury sent him to Helen, so she could see if she could find any answers about all of the questions he had. Secretary Ross was he one who passed him to Fury first, so he keeps up our asses wanting answers,” Natasha started to explain.</p><p>“But since we have him in our custody now, Helen’s trying to delay giving any answers about him to Ross or Fury because she just found someone who can help her analyse all the tests she had been doing,” Tony continued, sighing. “According to Helen and Pyotr himself, he lives in pain. Pyotr said Hydra split his mind in two and he’s the one who keeps the pain while the other guy kept them alive in missions.”</p><p>“And now there’s... phantom pain?” Harley asked, and Tony could just shrug.</p><p>“We don’t have answers to that yet, on the why,” Natasha said, leaning back on her chair. “They did all kinds of experiments on him, anything they wanted. He just complied since it seems that he wanted to live, or maybe he had just given up already.”</p><p>Hayley nodded, looking at the camera feed again. Pyotr was sound asleep now. He must have stayed awake for around an hour before he passed out.</p><p>“Can I see it?” Harley asked, looking at the two adults.</p><p>“See what?” Tony asked.</p><p>“His file,” Harley cleared up. Tony and Natasha exchanged looks, and Harley was already knowing what their answer was going to be. “Please, dad... Maybe I can help, a fresh set of eyes always helps.”</p><p>“The things on his file aren’t things you would wish to see, darling, we already talked about this,” Natasha said, pulling Harley’s chair in her direction. She got one of his hands, holding in between hers. “I’m not saying this so you snoop on our backs, I’m serious. Don’t go looking for it. There are things there that if you don’t have a stomach for it you’ll end up like Tony.”</p><p>Harley looked at Tony, who just sighed and looked at Natasha, giving a silent permission for her to explain.</p><p>“He didn’t enter his lab for almost two or three weeks,” Natasha said, and Harley’s eyes grew bewildered. “He wasn’t feeling well.”</p><p>“Just…” Tony tried, and sighed before he continued. Both of his hands were down on his lap, fingers lacing each other. “Just don’t go looking for it, ok? We’re trying our best here, and both your uncle Clint and your uncle Bruce are already helping us with everything.”</p><p>“But I just want to help,” Harley tried, but received stern looks from both of the adults. “You know I’ll probably try to snoop around already, why not just show me?”</p><p>“Because this is not something that the stomach of little bugs can handle,” Nat said a little playfully.</p><p>“Did uncle Bucky and him see each other already?” Harley asked, opting to leave the bug comment behind.</p><p>“Not yet,” Tasha said, squeezing Harls hand a little. “Your uncle Bucky hasn't left his and Sam’s room much since Fury sent us Pyotr.”</p><p>“Do you think he knows Pyotr?” Harley questioned, and it was Natasha’s turn to shrug.</p><p>“Maybe yes, maybe not.” She let go of his hand but kept looking at the boy. “We need to wait and see if Bucky will leave his room.”</p><p>[...]</p><p>Harley did try to snoop around.</p><p>The only problem was that he didn't find anything.</p><p>Tony must have hidden everything and was probably laughing at him right now for going after things he was warned to not even try to go after. He just wanted to help, and now he couldn't.</p><p>By the time he finally decided to frustratingly just let everything aside, there was a figure by the door of his personal lab, one he knew for years now.</p><p>“Already giving up, lad?” Cassie asked, a smirk in her lips. She had her arms crossed and a jacket neatly put on top of them.</p><p>“Hi to you too, Cass,” Harley said, getting up from his chair while she got inside the lab and got nearer to where he was.</p><p>She stopped besides him, looking at the screens of his computer now empty of things like it had been five minutes ago.</p><p>“So, what’s the problem? Trying to solve the JFK assassination or something?” She asked, looking at Harley.</p><p>“No, just another mystery.” He offered his chair to her and went to get the other one he had to the side there.</p><p>“Hm, are you trying to become part of the Scooby-Doo gang?” She questioned, sitting on the chair that he offered her and getting herself comfortable while she looked at him pulling another chair for himself.</p><p>“Oh, no, this is CIA worth.” He sat down, and she now seemed more interested. He just got his mouse and keyboard, turning them to himself.</p><p>He pulled the feed from Pyotr’s room, who had now changed sleeping positions but seemed to still be very much sound asleep.</p><p>“He’s the mystery,” Harley said, and Cassie stopped to observe the feed. “Mom said he’s Hydra, that Secretary Ross sent him to Fury and Fury sent him to aunt Helen. And now aunt Helen is studying everything she can about just his DNA and blood samples she can get to see if she can find out what he can do, what they did to him and etc.”</p><p>“Have uncle Tony tried to enter any Hydra databases already?” Cassie asked, moving her eyes to the boy besides her.</p><p>“I asked once and mom said that Hydra doesn’t have a digital footprint like everyone, they keep almost all of their files in physical form.”</p><p>“But they do have something online, don’t they?”</p><p>“Dad said there wasn’t anything about him,” Harley said, pointing to the feed.</p><p>Cassie nodded, laying back on the chair and crossing her legs. </p><p>“They would need a physical base then, to get the information,” she remarked.</p><p>“The problem is finding out which base, and how fast we would need to be on our side so they don’t destroy the archives.”</p><p>“And here lies the problem.”</p><p>“And here lies the problem,” Harley repeated.</p><p>“Are Cooper and Lila coming?” Cassie questioned. “Dad said he doesn’t know, just that they are on the farm house and Wanda is there with them.”</p><p>“I don’t know either. Uncle Clint took them there before the classes ended since they already had their grades on a good line and they got themselves to not need to do their finals.”</p><p>Cassie adjusted herself in the chair again, turning her head a little to the side, just enough to hear the <i>pop</i> of the bone.</p><p>“Abbie wants to visit Wanda, see how she’s doing,” Harley said. “Even I want to visit her now.”</p><p>“Pietro didn’t have any improvements, did he?”</p><p>Harley shook his head and pursed his lips.</p><p>“Is aunt Helen by the other building?”</p><p>“He’s here,” Harley pointed to the screen of his computer, “because it's just that nurse there, the one that comes from time to time.”</p><p>Cassie made an understanding noise, uncrossing her arms and stretching them a little in front of her.</p><p>“Uncle Bruce is already back then.” She looked at Harley, seeing him nod. “Did uncle Thor come too?”</p><p>“Uncle Bruce said Thor is still solving a few things in Asgard, something involving his mom.”</p><p>“Maybe we could ask him, about the boy. Uncle Bruce, I mean.”</p><p>“His name is Pyotr, according to himself. Mom said it’s just a name they gave him.”</p><p>“So you talked to him?” Cassie said, pointing to Harley and poking him on the arm once.</p><p>“It was like, less than five minutes.” He sighed. “I tried to talk once with him when we were by dad’s lab but I don’t think he even heard me talking.”</p><p>“Did he say anything that maybe was important?”</p><p>“He feels pain remembering things. Dad and mom said he’s in pain almost all of the time and that aunt Helen is trying to discover what it is.”</p><p>Cassie nodded, looking back at the computer screen.</p><p>“Why don’t we go talk to him?” She asked, giving Harley a sideways glance.</p><p>“He’s sleeping, he had a pain flare up while we were eating lunch.”</p><p>“Maybe later, then.”</p><p>“Later.”</p><p>[...]</p><p>He recognized the boy, very slightly, but he did. He wasn’t feeling so well because of that, and now he was in the room right in front of his.</p><p>Bucky was truly trying to hide himself, from everyone for that matter. Sam would come and go, bring him some food here and there. He could feel that their relationship stagnated a little because of Bukcy holding himself back, scared of even his shadow.</p><p>The other man was doing his best and Bucky was feeling like he was doing the bare minimum.</p><p>Since being rescued him and Tony one talk, <i>one</i>. One just enough to clear everything that Bucky did and to Tony tell him that he didn’t blame Buky for the things that happened, that it was just unfortunate that they did, but not even that talk could take the blame he felt weighing on his shoulders.</p><p>And now, seeing the boy there, he felt responsible for some reason, responsable that bad things happened and he did nothing. Sam and him had a talk about that, about how guilty Bucky feels about not helping all those children he saw coming and going from all the Hydra bases he went to.</p><p>Sam reassured him from time to time that it wasn’t his fault, that he was also being tortured because he was just another asset to them, and Bucky was really trying to believe his words.</p><p>He hadn’t left the room Tony was letting him stay on in weeks by this point. Steve tried to talk with him once, but he just turned around and ignored his friend, not really feeling ready to have a serious conversation.</p><p>He decided that he should leave his room, even if just to at least take in the air from outside, breathe a little.</p><p>Bucky took a deep breath, holding the bed sheet around himself firmly in his metal hand. He opened the door with his right, taking a quick look around the corridor before leaving the room and going to the common room.</p><p>Steve was sitting by the sofa with Sam, the two engaged in small talk. There were other people all around, but he wasn’t paying much attention. He went to the sofa, throwing himself besides Sam and laid his head on the man’s shoulder.</p><p>He let himself lose on the time there, feeling Sam’s hand in between his metal and flesh hands.</p><p>By the time the boy entered the place after Harley, he wasn’t paying attention, but Pyotr was.</p><p>Pyotr could almost touch the memory playing in front of him. The man strapped to a chair while someone repeated words in a loop. He could feel under his skin the electric shocks he himself received during the years and the cold he felt right after.</p><p>He stopped just a few meters away from the man, keeping his eyes on him. The room went a little silent, Bucky finally raising his head so the two could meet eyes.</p><p>Bucky got up from the sofa, and now everyone was observing the scene happening in front of them. They kept themselves on that starting game, the sheet that was covering Bucky’s metal arm already fallen down on the floor under the man.</p><p>“James Barnes, but they call me Bucky,” the man presented himself, trying to break the ice. But Pyotr already knew him.</p><p>He knew him from other rodeos. That’s why he could identify Bucky’s heartbeat before.</p><p>“You’re the Winter Soldier,” Pyotr remarked, and he saw the man spasm for a second before taking a deep breath.</p><p>“Yeah, that too,” Bucky said after sighing.</p><p>Pyotr kept his eyes on the man while the other just looked around to the others, who Pyotr could tell were expectantly hoping for something else to happen. Maybe a fight to break out since he could smell the bad odor of gunpowder coming from somewhere.</p><p>“I saw you once, just once,” Pyotr commented, bringing the man’s attention to him. “They were wiping you. I was young. They put the words on my head not long after.”</p><p>Pyotr sighed, seeing Bucky look at him with what seemed pity, but he wasn’t sure.</p><p>“I know them, your words.” He now could smell very clearly the gunpowder in the air. People were taking their guns out and it was bothering Pyotr’s nose. “They repeated them on a loop the day I saw you.”</p><p>Bucky was shaking a little on his feet, so Pyotr got nearer to the man, extending his hand to him, palm up. Bucky just looked at the hand before offering his flesh one, deciding that maybe he should show he wasn’t the monster he thought the boy thought he was.</p><p>As Bucky’s hand laid on top of his, Pyotr took a deep breath, just looking at both of their hands together for a few seconds before coming back to the real world. He took his other hand and turned Bucky’s hand around, holding the man’s pulse with his thumb and index fingers.</p><p>“The difference between me and them,” Pyotr started, laying a finger on Bucky’s hand and drawing a greek letter on his hand, <i>phi</i>, while he continued talking, “is that I’m not the bitch who’s going to just say them.”</p><p>Pyotr saw the symbol glow a faint orange light and change to a yellow before disappearing, already knowing very well he was the only one there seeing the light.</p><p>“It hurts being put in that chair, doesn’t it?” Pyotr asked, looking up. Bucky nodded slightly. “They think we’re just assets, so they made us believe that.”</p><p>He looked around, for a second, seeing Natasha putting her gun away and some other people he didn’t know doing the same. It was already too late for his head anyways.</p><p>“They put me in the freezer when you fell, for more time than they would usually put me, to teach me a lesson on how I couldn’t escape them.” Pyotr pulled Bucky’s arm a little, moving his finger to Bucky’s pulse. He drew a circle there, continuing to talk. “I guess they were wrong after all. Everyone always finds their ways to run away.”</p><p>The circle glowed a faint green, and Pyotr was satisfied with that. He let go of Bucky’s pulse, feeling his head starting to pulse inside his skull.</p><p>“It feels good not having them breathing down my neck for once,” Pyotr finished, letting his right hand go up to his temple. He pressed his fingers on his head, trying to hold back the pain for a little.</p><p>When he felt it was starting to be a little unbearable, he just turned around, leaving the room behind and deciding it was time for him to take a stroll to clear his head.</p><p>He could already feel the pain wanting to hit him enough times to knock him out.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*Is already sleeping.*</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. “Проснись, маленькая ведьма. (Wake up, little witch.)”</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I have a job, I have some money... I should be happier than I'm being right now, but I got headaches and I'm tired beyond help. Yeah, being an adult is hard.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*Me, to myself.*<br/>“Stop it, get some help…”</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They found Pyotr passed out outside the main building, right on top of the growing burnt grass Thor left on Tony’s lawn.</p>
<p>It was already night, so Bucky offered to get the boy and left him in the guest room in front of his own.</p>
<p>The next day, by the morning, Christine appeared to get the boy back to the U-GIN building, but he hadn't woken up yet. Bucky, again, got the boy and put him on the backseat of the woman's car, everyone just observing while they went away.</p>
<p>There was a strange mood hovering over everyone on that Monday morning. It took until the afternoon for everyone to get into comfortable ritms again with Clint arriving in the compound, also bringing the news that Wanda decided to stay by the farm house.</p>
<p>Harley, Abbie and Cassie had already pulled Cooper and Lila to the boy’s lab so they could talk about visiting the farm house so they could see Wanda, and Nathaniel went to play with Morgan. Tony offered himself to play with the two younglings since everyone else was already involved in conversations and he had some time before he decided to go down to his own lab.</p>
<p>Bucky was the one that found the teenagers in the lab and decided to enter and place himself in between Harley and Cassie.</p>
<p>“Wanda’s not doing that well, dad thinks there’s something beyond that,” Lila commented, putting her phone in her pocket after looking at the time. “Me and Cooper were feeling not that well there too.”</p>
<p>“We must’ve said to her to come with us a million times, but she’s stubborn, you know?” Cooper said.</p>
<p>“I still want to visit her,” Abbie said, crossing her arms. She was very sure about that decision of hers, and no one was going to stop her. Maybe help could be the better way of describing it.</p>
<p>“We will, little bird,” Harley reassured her. “If no one takes us there, I already know how to drive and we all know where everyone keeps their car keys.”</p>
<p>“If it’s just the five of you, you can fit in one car,” Bucky chimed in, leaning his head on Harley’s shoulder. He was really ready to take a nap before dinner.</p>
<p>“Morgan will probably want to go if we go,” Harley said, pursing his lips. “Mom would be mad if we left her behind.”</p>
<p>“Nate also likes Wanda, he would like to go back if we could,” Lila commented, getting her hand together and cracking her knuckles before letting her elbows resting on the arms of the chair she was on.</p>
<p>“We could ask aunt Helen if Pyotr could come with us,” Cassie offered, and everyone seemed to agree that that was a valid option also.</p>
<p>“I could drive you guys too, if you want,” Bucky said, and Harley gave him a look.</p>
<p>“You need to get a new driver’s license, uncle Bucky,” Abbie commented, looking at the man on the other side from Harley. “A driver’s license from the 1900s doesn’t work today.”</p>
<p>Everyone snickered and went on a fit of laughter when they saw Bucky showing Abbie his tongue, just like a child.</p>
<p>“Maybe we could get Harry here to drive us,” Lila commented, and Harley got in a million shades of red while everyone continued laughing.</p>
<p>"Who 's Harry?” Bucky asked, getting his head up from Harley’s shoulder and looking at the boy.</p>
<p>Harley gave Lila a meaningful look and the two got up in a flash, Halrye running after the girl. Cassie tapped Bucky’s shoulder, ready to say something when Harley came screeching back to the sofa and Cassie also started to run away from the boy.</p>
<p>Even Bucky now was laughing. Maybe he already had his answer about who Harry was after all.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>When Pyotr woke up two days later, the first thing he did was take a cold bath. He could feel the sweat on his skin, and it bothered him to the point he couldn’t get himself laid down anywhere.</p>
<p>A new fresh set of dark blue clothes was waiting for him by the bathroom door, which he just put on before entering his bedroom again and finding Christine waiting right outside the door. The woman turned around, entering the room when she saw that he was already dressed with a tray in her hands.</p>
<p>She gave him the tray and he looked over all the food, feeling it was a little bit too much but that he would try to eat everything he could.</p>
<p>The two sat by the bed, Christine looking out the window while Pyotr ate.</p>
<p>“Are you feeling better?” She asked, looking at the boy. He just nodded, putting the last piece of toast in his mouth.</p>
<p>The food was good. Well, anything would be better than what they would occasionally give him on the Hydra bases we lived throughout the years.</p>
<p>“Do you want to take a walk? It will be good for you to keep moving.” Christine turned herself a little on the bed so she could look better at him. “Tony said you slept a lot while you were on the compound.”</p>
<p>Pyotr nodded again, finishing to drink the orange juice and putting the glass down and looking at the tray, surprising himself when he saw that he ended up eating everything.</p>
<p>Christine took the tray from he bed and signed for him to come with her, so he did so, going after her like she was a mother duck and he was a duckling.</p>
<p>They left the tray by the kitchen and Pyotr pulled Christine until they reached the door of Pietro's room. He looked at her expectantly.</p>
<p>“Is he better?” He asked, his voice just a little higher than a whisper.</p>
<p>“Helen took the tube out, he's been breathing on his own since Monday,” Christine said, giving Pietro a meaningful look before looking at Pyotr again. “Helen said she’ll be doing new readings of his brain activities later today before she goes to bed.”</p>
<p>She had already said once about it being her that did the surgery on him, and Pyotr could almost feel the guilt sipping through the cracks of her life. And seeing how affected she was by seeing Pietro on that bed seemed to make much more sense on why everything happened than by just taking a look in a few memories here and there.</p>
<p>Everything always gets fuzzy when you put alcohol in the middle.</p>
<p>“Is Helen here now?” Pyotr asked, thinking about something he hadn’t before.</p>
<p>“No, she went to get Doctor Ross from the airport.” Christine crossed her arms, taking a deep breath. “Betty went back to where she lived on the weekend so she could get more of her things to bring to NY.”</p>
<p>“Pietro has a sister, doesn’t he?” Christine squinted her eyes after he asked, her heart turning a bit sideways. “I heard someone commenting that she stayed behind somewhere by the compound.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Yeah, he does. Wanda,” The woman explained, looking at Pietro again and keeping her eyes focused on the body on the bed. “Helen said last time she was here it was a disaster. She would have taken the whole building down if it wasn’t for Vision. The two had a thing happening some time ago but I’m not really sure about now.”</p>
<p>Pyotr nodded, taking a last look at Pietro before holding on Palmer’s arm and pulling her so they could take their walk.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>“Do you think it will be ok?” Pietro asked, making Pyotr’s attention go back to him.</p>
<p>“For a matter of facts, yeah,” Pyotr answered, looking down to his hands. “I can only say to you that I do hope everything ends up ok, because you’ll have everyone on your side if anything happens again.”</p>
<p>Pietro nodded in understanding while Pyotr took a deep breath and looked at the horizon.</p>
<p>“I have a theory, but I’m not sure about it.” Pyotr started. “I think there’s something else at stake here, not just what I have been thinking it is.”</p>
<p>“But is it bad?” Pietro looked at him and Pyotr kept his eyes in the distance.</p>
<p>“Maybe yes, maybe not. I’m not sure.”</p>
<p>Both of them sighed, Pyotr getting up from the ground and giving Pietro a helping hand.</p>
<p>“Let’s keep doing what I had in mind for the moment,” Pyotr announced, and Pietro held on to his hand to get up.</p>
<p>“Let’s do it then.”</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>The little group arrived by the U-GIN building piled up in one of Tony’s cars with Harley behind the wheel.</p>
<p>They had agreed it was the best way to do that. They thought for a few days and let the idea boil and decided that maybe they could just ask Helen behind the other adults backs, even if they knew that at some point aunt Helen would end up telling them.</p>
<p>They wanted to visit Wanda, and for them, bringing Pyotr along was a great idea.</p>
<p>Yes, they knew how dangerous the boy was, but he hadn’t attacked anyone or something like that since he had arrived. Harley knew that he had attacked with his words, said things the adults didn’t want them listening on to and Cassie took him out of the stupid idea of going after shit hree times by this point.</p>
<p>He was a curious boy and for him, something he could do very well was to go after things he isn’t allowed to see.</p>
<p>When Harley, Abbie, Cassie, Cooper and Lila arrived at the floor of their aunt Helen’s lab, they weren’t expecting to see her taking blood samples from Pyotr while the boy seemed to be sleeping in the chair he was on.</p>
<p>They knew the boy slept a lot by that point, but sleeping while letting people take out his blood was a new level.</p>
<p>“Hey, aunt Helen,” Cassie called up, the woman putting down the last syringe before looking up at the kids by the door.</p>
<p>The woman put one finger up to her lips, taking out the needle from Pyotr’s arm. She discarded everything, putting the samples on their designed places before taking the holder with her and making a sign for the kids to follow her.</p>
<p>“He fell asleep not even an hour ago, I’m still trying to find out why but I think I’m on the right path,” Helen said, closing the door of her other lab. She put down the blood samples and took off her gloves, discarding them on the trash and going on to search for new ones.</p>
<p>“I thought you would have known by this point,” Harley commented, going to sit down on the armrest of the sofa in the corner. The other four followed him, Cassie sitting herself on the other armchair while the other three sat down like normal people.</p>
<p>“I tried everything, all the tests I remembered,” Helen put on the new gloves, going on to fiddle with the blood samples. “Doctor Ross even took a look on all the results just to confirm we basically have nothing besides negative tests and wrong answers to our questions.”</p>
<p>“What questions?” Abbie asked, making herself comfortable by pulling one of her feet up to the seat of the couch. SHe hugged her leg, looking over to what Helen was doing, seeming to be quite interested.</p>
<p>“Well....” Helen stopped for a second before continuing. “The first would probably be his information, something we could find on government databases or something, but Tony is already taking care of that and he says he doesn’t have anything besides too many people by the name Pyotr and too little time to look over every single of the profiles.”</p>
<p>“If he was raised by Hydra, I don’t think you could find things so easy on him,” Lila said, laying herself a bit against Cassie.</p>
<p>“Yeah, we know that.” Helen sighed, putting the tube she was holding on a machine and let it be for the time being. She needed to wait for those samples. She turned herself to the children, taking off her gloves and discarding them. “We would need somewhere physical to find things on him, maybe a place where he was raised.”</p>
<p>Everyone went silent before Helen continued, getting near to where the teenagers settled themselves while pulling a chair for herself.</p>
<p>“The second question would be what they did to him, at least something. We have Doctor Ross on the team now, but it’s still early to draw concrete results.”</p>
<p>“Do you have anything on that answer?” Harley asked. Helen let her head fall a little to the side.</p>
<p>“Sort of? I’m not sure.” She sat down, crossing her legs and arms. “Betty said she thinks his DNA was mixed with some sort of animal. His body regenerates itself very fast. When they caught him the first time, his leg was broken and it wasn’t on a span of around 20 hours.”</p>
<p>“So he has powers?” Cassie asked, exchanging looks with Halrey before looking at Helen.</p>
<p>“My best guess would be some sort of super soldier serum, like Steve’s and Bucky’s.” Helen nodded, thinking for a second. “But by what Betty is saying, about his DNA being mixed with something else… It doesn’t technically rule out the whole possibility of him having some form of super soldier serum, but it does raise questions.”</p>
<p>“Is there a third question?” Cassie inquiries.</p>
<p>“Maybe just why he has been sleeping so much.”</p>
<p>The kids all nodded, understanding.</p>
<p>“We came here for another reason, actually,” Cooper decided to say, Hayley nodding for him to continue. “We were thinking about visiting Wanda, take Morgan and Nate there.”</p>
<p>Helen nodded, uncrossing one of her arms and making a gesture for him to continue.</p>
<p>“We were thinking about taking Pyotr with us,” Lila chimed in, Helen’s attention shifting to the girl. “We thought that maybe him and Wanda could bond, you know, because of the whole…” The <i>Hydra</i> part of the phrase being implied, and Helen could understand their point.</p>
<p>“And what do your parents think about the idea?” Helen asked, raising one of her eyebrows. The teenagers groaned under their breaths, and Helen held her laugh. “Going to the compound is one thing, something Tony himself came here to ask permission for, and made himself clear that he could hold on if anything bad happened. The farm house doesn’t have the kind of protection the compound has.”</p>
<p>It was almost like a collective sigh while they looked at each other. They hadn’t thought that part through.</p>
<p>“And you guys know how Wanda’s not feeling well, how unstable she has been,” Helen called up their attention by continuing her line of thought. “Having Pyotr there could aggravate both of them.”</p>
<p>They looked at each other for a moment, and before they could continue, the door of the lab opened. Christine was by the door, Pyotr right behind her.</p>
<p>“We’re going for a walk, Helen,” Christine said. Helen nodded to the woman while looking over her shoulder to the boy. He was almost sleeping while standing there. “I’ll try to give him a proper lunch after, do you guys want to eat with us today?” She moved her eyes to the teenagers.</p>
<p>“There’s no need, Chris,” Harley answered for them. “We just came here for a fast visitation, mom’s already waiting for us to go back.”</p>
<p>“Ok, then.” CHrisitne looked at Helen again. “Is Betty having lunch with us? I saw her in the lab earlier.”</p>
<p>“I’ll ask her in a few minutes, you can go take him for a walk,” Helen said, throwing a smile in Chistine’s direction.</p>
<p>The woman just nodded, closing the door while turning around and whisking Pyotr away.</p>
<p>“Please, don’t keep on ideas that maybe could hurt people,” Helen turned to the teenagers again. “Let them boil for a little more, maybe bring in up on the future again if you guys think it’s the moment. And talk with people that can bring other points to the table, like your parents. They know so much more about safety than I’ll ever know, so I can just say for you guys to ask for the right help.”</p>
<p>They all nodded, exchanging looks one more time.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>She caught up to the outside world when she felt the lonely tear streaming down her own face. The tear stopped on her chin, which she cleaned with the back of her hand before shaking her head and taking a deep breath.</p>
<p>She could do something, but her mind was so out of everything that she couldn’t make her magic concentrate on something, make things work the way she wanted them to.</p>
<p>If her brain was in the right place, she would have already found out a way to help her own brother. She could feel the deepest of her magic on the day she fought against Ultron, after it shot Pietro down and she felt his life start to slip away.</p>
<p>She knows she could help him come back, but how could someone, who almost tore down a building when they saw their own brother laying in a bed and feeling helpless for not being able to do something, do?</p>
<p>Wanda put down the mug on the table, tearing her eyes away from the horizon she had focused herself through the window. She took another deep breath, getting up from the chair and following her way to her bedroom.</p>
<p>She laid down on the bed, feeling the pressure of her own body make her not want to move a muscle for the next hours she knew she would be awake. She was tired, tired of feeling so out of everything, not able to do something she knew she was able to.</p>
<p>The pressure on her head was also tiring. She had a constant headache for a few days already, and it didn’t matter how many times she took medicine for it. Wanda had a thought that maybe her magic was burning the pills from inside her, so there wasn’t anything she could properly do.</p>
<p>Her gaze fixed itself on the ceiling, and she could feel herself falling asleep.</p>
<p>But on the next moment, she was standing in a strange place.</p>
<p>There were colours everywhere, but one seemed to be stronger.</p>
<p>She gave a step frontwards, realizing the water under her feet when she did so. She couldn’t feel it against her bare feet, so she knew she must have been dreaming by that point.</p>
<p>In the distance, a figure appeared. She squinted her eyes and tried to rub them, only to realize the figure moved from it’s first spot. Every time she blinked, it seemed to get nearer to her until it was right in front of her face.</p>
<p>She knew the boy, she had seen him before. Wanda forced her mind to go a little deep in memories before it gave her an answer.</p>
<p>Hydra.</p>
<p>He was from Hydra.</p>
<p>She gave a step back, the boy giving one frontwards. They stayed on that dance until Wanda fell on her back, seeing the boy loom over her body.</p>
<p>“Проснись, маленькая ведьма. (Wake up, little witch.)”</p>
<p>His voice reverberated through her body, and she could feel she was being thrown out from whatever place this was.</p>
<p>“It’s not your moment yet,” he continued, bending his body a little so his face was nearer to hers. “But be careful about broken wards. They let unwanted people in.”</p>
<p>He lifted one arm, holding out just one finger. In the moment he was going to touch her forehead, she jolted up on her bed and actually fell from it.</p>
<p>She took deep breaths, holding one of her hands against the base of her own neck. She sat on the floor, looking around her room to realize it was already night outside.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>Bucky was standing by the window, looking outside.</p>
<p>He saw the teenagers coming back a few hours earlier, and for a moment the thought of going over Helen’s building crossed his mind.</p>
<p>He had full consciousness that the boy knew his words, the ones who made him become something he always tried his hardest to fight against. But even having that knowledge it didn’t stop his mind to think he should make a visit.</p>
<p>Maybe it was a risk he was willing to go after.</p>
<p>Their only interaction ended with Bucky and the team finding Pyotr passed out on the grass outside, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad outcome from a conversation.</p>
<p>He moved away from the window, deciding to find Sam so the man could take him to the U-GIN building. He was sure of his decision.</p>
<p>Sam was by the gym, hitting one of the sandbags there. The man was very concentrated on the task ahead of him, so concentrated that he just realized Bucky was there when the other touched him shoulder so he could come back to the real world.</p>
<p>Sam jumped a little, looking back at Bucky, who was holding a chuckle.</p>
<p>“Can I ask you for something?” Bucky asked, putting his flash hand on the nape of Sam’s neck.</p>
<p>“You can ask me for anything, darling,” Sam responded smoothly, a sly smile on his face.</p>
<p>“You’ll maybe not like it,” Bucky was sincere.</p>
<p>“If it’s for you, there are a lot of things I don’t like but still do because you ask me with those puppy eyes, Buchanan.”</p>
<p>Bucky stared at the man, letting his hand fall to his side while keeping his best <i>straight but angry</i> face. Sam laughed, holding Bucky’s face in between both of his hands, Bucky feeling the bandages from Sam’s hand scrape against his skin.</p>
<p>“Ask away, darling,” Sam said, keeping a smile on his lips. “I’m sure I can manage and be a little confused before I can help you with whatever it is.”</p>
<p>“I want to go visit Pyotr.”</p>
<p>Sam’s smile faded away and the man took a deep breath. He looked around for a second before focusing on Bucky again.</p>
<p>“Are you sure about that?” Sam asked, and Bucky just nodded while keeping his gaze fixated on the other. Sam seemed to reconsider a few thoughts of his before continuing. “It’s dangerous, Buchanan, you know that, right?”</p>
<p>Bucky nodded again and Sam nodded too after a few seconds.</p>
<p>“Ok, ok.”Sam huffed, letting Bucky’s face go. “I’ll go get the car, I’ll go get my car so we can go. Can you wait for me by the front door?”</p>
<p>Bucky nodded one more time and the two started to move.</p>
<p>Bucky didn’t way for long by the front door. Sam was quiet the whole way to the U-GIN building and Bucky was reconsidering doing this, even if it was just for Sam’s peace of mind.</p>
<p>As the car came to a halt, James looked out the window to see the mastery of Helen’s building. He took a deep breath before opening the door, but Sam hold on to his arm, the metal one.</p>
<p>Bucky wished he could feel the warmth of Sam’s hand in that moment.</p>
<p>“I’ll be right behind you, ok?” Sam said. “I’ll intervene if something starts to go south, you understand?”</p>
<p>Bucky nodded and Sam let go of the arm. The two got out of the car, entering the silent building. It wasn’t like they were expecting someone to be there to receive them on this surprise visit, so they were a little bewildered when Christine appeared.</p>
<p>“How can I help you guys today?” She asked, a smile on her face.</p>
<p>“He wants to see the little guy,” Sam said, pointing to Bucky.</p>
<p>“The <i>little guy</i>,” Christine glared at Sam, “is sleeping.” She turned to look at Bucky, smiling again. “Third floor, you can try to wake him up if you want. He’s been sleeping for a few hours now. If he wakes up, send him down to dinner.”</p>
<p>And with that, she turned to the elevator, entering the metal box and keeping a hand by the door so it kept open. The two men entered, Christine pressing both the third and the fourth floor buttons.</p>
<p>They stepped out by the third and Christine just informed them it was the last door before the elevator closed again.</p>
<p>Sam and Bucky went down the corridor, opening the door quietly.</p>
<p>Pyotr was laying on the bed in the darkness of the room. The light from outside the door was the only light invading the room now, but it didn’t seem to bother the boy.</p>
<p>Bucky got nearer to the bed while Sam closed the door slightly, letting a little gap so they could have some light on the place.</p>
<p>He was ready to touch the boy, see if would wake up, but his hand went directly to the mattress. The boy was wide awake, sitting on the other side of the bed and taking deep breaths while looking Bucky in the eye. He didn’t seem scared or anything, maybe startled was the best word to describe.</p>
<p>“Remembering your past makes your future stronger, right?” Pyotr asked, taking a deep breath, realizing Bucky wasn’t the only one in the room and glaring at Sam for a moment before returning to look at James.</p>
<p>“Sometimes,” Bucky answered after a moment. “Sometimes it’s better to just forget.”</p>
<p>Pyotr hummed, moving to sit by the edge of the bed. He crossed his legs on top of the mattress, patting besides himself while looking at Bucky.</p>
<p>The man gave Sam a look before sitting down. Pyotr looked at the chair Christine used to sit and then to Sam, making a head gesture for the man to sit down. Sam did so, but he was in some way ready to fight.</p>
<p>Pyotr couldn’t even put this guilt on his shoulders.</p>
<p>“My mom used to call me <i>little rose</i>,” Pyotr said, looking down at his hands before looking up at Bucky. “She screamed for them to not take her little rose away before she died. That’s why they used the word <i>rose</i> in between the other ones they put on my head.”</p>
<p>Bucky nodded, understanding the meaning behind it but not seeing the bigger picture at first.</p>
<p>“What’s the meaning of the ones they used on you?” The boy asked, being sincere about that.</p>
<p>“I don’t think that’s a good conversation to have,” Sam intervened, but Pyotr didn’t look at him.</p>
<p>“Saying them in another language besides russian doesn’t work,” Pyotr explained. “They tried on me before, but they never work that way.” His head turned a little sideways. “You can explain to me backwards, if it helps.”</p>
<p>Bucky looked at Sam for a moment before looking back at the boy and deciding that maybe that was a conversation he wanted to have. Remember things he had forgotten.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*Me, looking at the shit I'm creating a seeing the storm coming.*<br/>“My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. “Don’t let people make a ghost out of you, Маленькая роза(little rose),”</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*Me, looking at a happy thing.*<br/>“This is brilliant,”<br/>*Looks at the angst.*<br/>“But I like this.”</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For Pyotr, hearing someone saying things was better than visualizing them.</p>
<p>It had been a few days since his talk with Bucky, and since then, he hadn't really said a word. He would sign simple things when Christine came over to his room, but he wouldn’t move much either.</p>
<p>He hadn’t slept like before, days at a time. He would sleep for two or three hours, stay awake for more than eight before trying to sleep again, only to be plagued with images he was trying to push to the back of his mind.</p>
<p>He wasn’t that ready to talk about that with someone. It wasn’t like someone would like to know, and he had in mind that maybe he would be just discarded after giving up all the information people around him now wanted.</p>
<p>Pyotr could feel the loneliness embracing him, embracing him like death tried so many times by this point.</p>
<p>He had no one. His mother was dead and he couldn’t remember if he had more family. Going after those memories hurt him, they would make him fall in deep sleep for days while his body tried to throw the pain away like it was always doing.</p>
<p>His mother was dead, and he could only remember that nickname she used to call him. It wasn’t even his name, and saying <i>little rose</i> or even thinking about that endearing term would make his head throb in pain.</p>
<p>For an instant, Pyotr felt a memory trying to come forward. He fought against it for a few moments before deciding it was for the best if he just let it come.</p>
<p>He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and laying his body backwards on the armchair he was sitting on. In an instant, he was laying down on the floor of water that didn’t make his clothes wet. The colors flowed around the empty space, Pyotr looking around until a tree appeared in the distance.</p>
<p>Pyotr walked until he reached the trunk, touching it with both of his hands and taking a deep breath before letting the memory wrap around his body.</p>
<p>He was standing in a room. Two people were there and Pyotr could hear a third heartbeat coming from the woman’s belly. She was sitting at the edge of a bed and a little boy was laying down there under some blankets.</p>
<p>
  <i>“There was once a farmer,” the woman started the story. Pyotr let himself sit on the floor besides the other side of the bed from the woman, just looking at the two of them. “He was very good at his job, and he was a kind human. But his family only ever saw him during Christmas when he was grumpy because he didn’t like the date.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Why didn't he like Christmas?” The little boy asked, looking up at his mother with adoration in his eyes.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“He thought it was silly that his family showed love to him just during that day, and pretended they didn’t let him aside the rest of the year,” the woman explained. “They thought it was enough when it really wasn’t.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She took a deep breath, laying a hand on top of the boy’s chest. Pyotr felt a warmth on his heart.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“One day, the man died,” she continued. “All of his family was present at the funeral, but they would only talk about what they would do about the farm and how he was a grumpy man. His neighbours, despite all the good things they said, weren’t able to change the family’s mind. Then, someone from the family suggested they should bring the man back to life so they wouldn’t need to worry about the legalities of the farm.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Did they do that?”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Yes, yes, they did.” The woman pursed her lips, sighing. “But he wasn’t the same. He was just the shell of his former self. He began to hear what his family said behind his back and he would act like that’s how he should do it. The family kept visiting for the next years during Christmas, and with time, the man was even grumpier than before.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She took her hand away from the boy’s chest and extended her hand to him. He took his hand from under his blanket and put it on top of hers while she took a black marker from one of the drawers from his bedside table.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“One of his neighbours, a sweet old lady, decided that enough was enough,” the woman continued as she started to write something on the back of the boy’s hand. “She went over to his house with some old tapes she had and she showed the man. She showed him how kind he was before while he fed the pond’s swans and how much he loved playing with the neighbourhood children. She showed him how everyone there loved him and how his family changed him.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Was he sad?” The boy asked, fixated on their hands while the woman put letter by letter down, not rushing the process.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“He was, he was so sad about what his family did that his sadness turned to anger.” She put down one more letter, pausing for a second before she continued both activities. “He called all of his family to come over, but none of them could because they had work in the city and they didn’t have time for silly things.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She finished the next letter, seeing the word she was imagining form itself on the boy’s hand. Pyotr could feel the pan against his own skin, rubbing the back of his hand with the thumb of the other hand.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“So he did the only logical thing he could,” she said, looking at the boy in the eyes. He looked at her eyes, waiting for her to continue. “He split his land and gave it to the neighbourhood kids. None of the parents wanted to accept saying it was supposed to go to his family, but the man convinced them that they showed more love towards him than his family ever did.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“What did the family do, mama?”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“They didn’t discover that in time. The man transferred all the land and let his body fall into the lake of his old property so he could go in peace. When they arrived at Christmas, they found the neighbourhood in the old man’s house exchanging stories about him, how he was so kind and a good man. The family asked what they meant by that and they showed the family what the old man did and told them how he sunk on the lake.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She finished writing the word, looking at it for a second before starting a second word right under the first one.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“The family tried to fight with them, saying the land was theirs. But before they could go away, the old sweet lady called them for a walk. The family didn’t want to go, so she used her powers to make them go with her.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>As she finished the second word, she put the lid back on the pen and put it away while letting the boy see what was in his hand.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“She told them how they weren’t inherent evil, but they were doing the devil’s work when they decided to bring the old man back just for their sake.” She lightly grabbed the boy’s wrist, holding his hand in a comfortable position for him. “She explained to them how much they transformed him on a ghost just so the man could transform in the story they wanted him to fit in, a grumpy old man who didn’t like anything when he was actually the total opposite of that.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Pyotr looked away from them, looking around the room for a moment. He knew very well the little bunny plushie that was just by the foot on the boy’s bed. His name was Мистер морковь(Mr. Carrot) because of the little carrot he carried in between his hands.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“She told them how he completely transformed into a ghost, just wanting to do the right thing before he finally decided it was time for himself to go back to the earth, because it was from the earth he came and it was where he needed to go,” she continued, moving her eyes to look the boy in his own. “She told them they wouldn’t come back, they wouldn’t do anything, because if they tried, she would curse them. They wouldn’t come back and wouldn’t fight the man’s decision because it was his last wish.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She let go of his hand, placing it on his chest again. Pyotr felt the warmth again, but this time more intense than before.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“They went away knowing what they did wrong and didn’t bother anyone in the neighbourhood anymore. Only one of his great-grandkids decided she needed to do the right thing and would visit every time she could, leaving daisies by the edge of the lake to purify her own lineage from then on and to say to her great-grandfather that he was a pure man and didn’t deserve what his family did to him, saying in the process how sorry she was that everything happened the way they did.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>The boy smiled, getting out from under the blanket and hugging the woman’s neck. She returned the hug, a silent tear falling down her left cheek. As they separated, she held the little boy’s face in between her hands and joined their foreheads, both looking in each other’s eyes.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Don’t let people make a ghost out of you, Маленькая роза(little rose),” the woman said. “You’re a person, a complex one full of emotions and memories. You have a name like everyone does, and you are just yourself. You need to fight against letting people make a ghost out of you.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“But if I’m not strong enough, mama?” He asked in a worried tone.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Then you can do your best, and your best will be enough if you keep trying to do the right thing.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He took a look at the boy’s hand, seeing the word φάντασμα written there and right under it the translation. Ghost.</i>
</p>
<p><i>Pyotr closed his eyes, letting the warmth he was feeling wash away the memory</i> until he was alone in his bedroom by the U-GIN building. He looked around, seeing that no one was there.</p>
<p>He got up from the armchair, going to find Chrstine so he could see what the woman was doing. He didn’t have a headache going after him.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>As Wanda woke up that morning, she felt rested. It was a feeling she hadn’t felt in a while and it was comforting. She was also feeling something warm in her chest, like something would happen and it wasn’t a bad thing.</p>
<p>She had no way of knowing what it was, but she discovered a little bit of it when she heard the sound of cars coming down the road to the farm house. She took a look out of the window, recognizing both of the cars coming.</p>
<p>Wanda opened the front door, waiting by the threshold while Harley parked one of the cars and Cassie the other. She knew the girl had just recently taken her driving exam, and by the looks of it she did very well on it.</p>
<p>“Wanda!” Morgan came running when Harley took her front her chair in the backseat of his car, and Wanda squatted down so she could catch the girl just in time and be tackled to the ground. “I missed you so much!”</p>
<p>“I missed you too, little angel,” Wanda whispered on the girl’s ear, and Morgan returned a giggle while getting up and trying her best to help the woman get up while she was actually using the threshold as leverage.</p>
<p>“I missed you too,” Abbie said a little shy while stopping in front of Wanda. The woman smiled at the girl, bending her knees just enough to catch Abbie and throw her over her shoulder.</p>
<p>“Oh my, dear, you guys brought me a sack of potatoes, I’m so glad!” Wanda exclaimed, going inside the house while Abbie laughed over her shoulder.</p>
<p>“I’m not a sack of potatoes, Wanda!” Abbie tried in between giggles. Wanda stopped by the kitchen counter, taking Abbie from her shoulder and putting the girl sitted on top of the marble.</p>
<p>“Oh, you’re not a sack of potatoes?” Wanda asked, putting her hands on her hips and making a confused face.</p>
<p>“I’m just me,” Abbie replied, and Wanda shot her a smile.</p>
<p>“Of course you are, an extraordinary <i>me</i>,” Wanda said, hugging the girl, who hugged back almost immediately. “I missed you, missy.”</p>
<p>Wanda could feel the girl’s smile against her shoulder, and she could only thank whoever that she wasn’t alone in that place for now. Just a day before she wasn’t feeling well and doubting she would wake up the next day and now she had a lot of people around her.</p>
<p>That was just enough for her brain to calm down.</p>
<p>“What about us?” She heard behind her, letting go of Abbie and turning around, seeing Cooper, Lila and Nate on the girl’s arms.</p>
<p>Wanda smiled, going to them and kneeling down in front of them.</p>
<p>“It hasn’t been long, but I already missed you guys so much,” Wanda said, being sincere. She grabbed Nate from the girl’s arm and adjusted the little boy so she could hug his two other siblings.</p>
<p>“It’s been so long since we last saw each other, hasn’t it?” Cassie chimed in the room, stopping by Harley’s side while Wanda let go of the two children and kept Nate on her own arms.</p>
<p>“It does, little wasp.” Wanda went to the two older teenagers, hugging Cassie first and letting a kiss in her cheek before moving to Harley and exchanging some eye contact with him before they hugged.</p>
<p>She let a kiss on his forehead after pulling his head down, everyone making themselves comfortable while she let Nate back with his siblings so she could prepare some food for all of them.</p>
<p>By the afternoon, they had settled by the living room with Morgan sat on Wanda’s lap while she fidgeted with some lego pieces she had in her hands and Nate slept on top of Cooper.</p>
<p>“There’s someone new by the U-GIN building,” Harley said at some point, and he received a slap in the arm from Cassie.</p>
<p>“Harley, Helen asked us to not mix things,”  the girl said, giving Harley a very pointed look.</p>
<p>“I know him,” Wanda declared.</p>
<p>The room went silent while everyone looked at the redhead woman, who was helping Morgan by holding some pieces in her hands while overlooking her work.</p>
<p>“How do you know him?” Harley asked. “I didn’t even say who it was.”</p>
<p>“I know him, that’s all you need to know,” Wanda made her point. She suggested quietly something that Morgan could do, and the girl gladly accepted the idea.</p>
<p>“He doesn’t smile,” Morgan said, grabbing another piece of lego from Wanda’s hand and putting it under some others.</p>
<p>“Do you know why?” Wanda asked, just loud enough for the others to keep on the conversation.</p>
<p>“Papa said he doesn’t know, that maybe he’s sad about something,” the girl said while grabbing the last pieces, putting them in their places and showing Wanda her little lego car. “I know he’s lying, but I think he doesn’t know why either.”</p>
<p>“I never stopped to think about that,” Harley said, a thinking expression dominating his face.</p>
<p>“Of course you didn’t, you don’t know him for long,” Morgan said, getting out from Wanda’s lap and going to Harley, giving the boy her little car and going away to grab her lego bucket.</p>
<p>“She has a point,” Abbie chimed in. “The other’s know him for longer, aunt Helen and Chrstine even more.”</p>
<p>“I Never actually heard his name,” Wanda confessed, putting both of her hands together and interlacing her fingers.</p>
<p>“He said it’s Pyotr, that they called him where he used to stay,” Harley fidget with the little lego car in his hands, but didn’t make a move he was going to take it apart like he’s used to do.</p>
<p>“Pyotr,” Wanda repeated.</p>
<p>THere were a few moments of silence, Wanda deciding something and realizing that maybe it could be important.</p>
<p>“I knew him from once, when they showed him to us,” she started. “My handler let me see him when he was younger, but at the time he was already… destroyed.” She took a deep breath and sighed. “He appeared in one of my dreams a few days ago, older than he was from the only time I saw him.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Did you guys… talk?” Cassie questions.</p>
<p>“I didn’t say anything, but he said for me to wake up, he called me a little witch in russian and that it was not my time yet. But he also said that I should be careful about broken wards, that they let unwanted people in,” The redhead explained.</p>
<p>“Maybe that’s one of his secret powers aunt Helen has been trying to discover,” Cassie straightened herself, looking at Harley. “Maybe he can enter people’s dreams.”</p>
<p>“It felt more like I entered a place I shouldn’t be at, actually,” Wanda interrupted Cass a little, calling their attention to her. “It felt comforting at first, but then I felt like I was being thrown out. Maybe one of his <i>secret powers</i> is not entering people’s dreams, but something else.”</p>
<p>They all nodded to her words, starting to make little theories about everything while Morgan pulled her lego bucket to sit near them while she could hear them and build her little creations.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>“I saw your sister,” Pyotr said, looking down at Pietro. The man was laying down on the floor, a little sunked on the water.</p>
<p>“When?” Pietro asked, seeming to get interested in the topic.</p>
<p>“A few days ago, here.” Pyotr sighed, sitting down besides Pietro. “She just entered, but I threw her out. She’s too unstable to be here, she’s fragile enough for me to say it’s a hazard having her here.”</p>
<p>“You said that maybe she could help,” Pietro said, getting his upper body up and sitting, looking at the other.</p>
<p>“I think that, yes, she can help, but it’s not by entering here, “ Pyotr explained. “This place was already a little cracked before I pulled you in, and now the cracks are getting bigger and or time is running a little short before something bad happens.”</p>
<p>“If something bad happens, what exactly will happen?”</p>
<p>“I’ll enter a coma again to reconstruct.” Pyotr sighed, looking down. “I hate when it happens, but there isn’t much I could do about it.”</p>
<p>“If you enter a coma, what happens to me?” Pietro asked, a little worried.</p>
<p>“You’ll be sent back to your body, be trapped there until I come back to consciousness and grab you again.”</p>
<p>Pietro nodded, getting up from the floor and extending a hand to Pyotr.</p>
<p>“Let’s hope things start to move faster from now on then,” the man said. Pyotr got up with his help, sighing.</p>
<p>“Let’s go then.”</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>Pyotr didn’t talk for a few more days after.</p>
<p>He was just so caught up in thoughts that he was actually getting away from everyone by that point.</p>
<p>He was just a source of information and he knew that. He knew it would hurt to get those memories that would be useful while doing his damn best to not touch anything he just wanted to keep down.</p>
<p>For Bucky, a good exercise was to bring memories to the front and tell them to someone, exchange thoughts with people.</p>
<p>For Pyotr, the best he could do was to get away from people. People got hurt near him, and he was just waiting for the strike, the ocean that retreated so far that he knew would come a hundred times worse.</p>
<p>He wanted to express his emotions like other people did, but the thought that he could be punished for it made him shiver and just push everything down, put everything into this pressure pot and hope it doesn’t explode while he was near other people.</p>
<p>Christine did try to talk to him many, many times, but he would just stay silent, looking out the window. He would see a man in the tree line sometimes, and even knowing it was just something out of his head, he couldn’t just not look.</p>
<p>
  <i>How could he ever explain to his mom that he helped people make a ghost out of him? That was beyond him to explain the why.</i>
</p>
<p>He got up from his chair, deciding that after he rummaged through so many memories during the time he had been alone, he should just tell people everything. Fuck the pain, there wasn’t naything he could do abou that.</p>
<p>Pyotr got up from his place in the window, getting out of the bedroom he had been staying by and going up one floor. He kept his arms hugging his own torso, thinking and re-thinking this decision of his.</p>
<p>They would find him, Hydra was going to find him either way, with him telling or not telling, and telling seemed to be such a better option.</p>
<p>Both Helen and Betty were in the lab, discussing things. Both of the women stopped mid chat when they realized Pyotr was there. He just got near Helen, extending his hand to her.</p>
<p>She was hesitant for a reason, and he knew that she probably knew how this might work. Pyotr got what he wanted and said something important, it was a lot like this. He felt the necessity of saying something relevant for so much he got from people, it was at least a little fair.</p>
<p>She let down the pile of papers she was holding on the table besides her, taking a deep breath herself before putting her hand on top of Pyotr’s.</p>
<p>He didn’t even need to take a deep breath himself. It was quick and easy.</p>
<p>“The animal you guys are looking for are spiders,” Pyotr said, turning Helen’s hand around and drawing a fast circle in her palm. As he expected, blue lit up before it exchanged for a yellow.</p>
<p>He extended his hand to Betty, and the woman did almost the same as Helen did. She put her hand on top of his, Pyotr just absorbing everything before also turning her hand around and putting a circle down.</p>
<p>“Did you… remember that?” Betty asked, looking at her own hand. It had glowed a faint green before it changed to red, just as faint. She hadn’t seen anything, but Pyotr saw everything.</p>
<p>“I just went after it,” Pyotr said, turning around and leaving the lab.</p>
<p>As the first sight of a bathroom, Pyotr just entered and let all the contents of his stomach on the toilet while feeling lightheaded.</p>
<p>He got himself back to the bedroom just enough to pass out right when he crossed the threshold.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“This is getting out of hand.”<br/>*Lays down on the floor.*<br/>“I’m in agony.”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. A SNEAK PEAK INTO THE NEXT CHAPTER WHILE I EDIT THE OTHERS</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hi, I'm Zoe, and I have a job.</p>
<p>It's been a little over a month since I got this job and I'm trying to do my best to keep my happiness up.<br/>But recently, a sad side of mine started to take over and there wasn't much I could do besides wait to let it happen and pass.</p>
<p>I'm finally starting to feel better and I had a last minute idea about this story popped up in my head that will kinda help the mistery go up.</p>
<p>So after a long shower and talks with myself, I decided to start editing this story to make what I want to do happen.<br/>But with my job and university, my life has been a little chaotic in relation of time I have to do what I like to do, which means writting.</p>
<p>I'll be doing the review of the previous chapters in the next month fowards, so while you guys wait, I decided to post a sneak peak into a whole scene and part of another one I have already done for the next chapter that will be coming.</p>
<p>Enjoy, and I'm sorry for the delay.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>[PLEASE READ THE NOTES, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THIS IS JUST A SNEAK PEAK INTO WHAT WILL BECOME OF THIS CHAPTER, BUT NONETHELESS, ENJOY.]</b>
</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>For someone who was labeled a disgrace and just an eternal problem, Wade felt he was doing his damn best and finally succeeding at it.</p>
<p>He had a good job as a security personnel by the Stark Tower, he would do gigs for S.H.I.E.L.D. from time to time and even earn some extras outside of both of his <i>regular and irregular</i> jobs. But most importantly, he finally was taking good care of his daughter.</p>
<p>He must have been just a youngling with a bad GPA throughout the school days he had, and with no thoughts of going to college at any point in his future, but having his daughter under his care changed a lot of thoughts he had about preceding in life.</p>
<p>Wade was sad that Carmelita died, not even a year ago, that she wouldn't see their daughter grow up and pass through things Wade was certain he would need to ask help with, but he was happy nonetheless.</p>
<p>His thoughts deviated to when he was a child for a moment, remembering the lady he encountered once that told him probably the phrase that he was revisiting the most, the only thing he could remember properly about his younger days.</p>
<p><i>“Always do your best, child, because sometimes is just enough to make someone’s day better,”</i> she said.</p>
<p>Wade had been crying silently that day, after his own mother let him outside the supermarket, and only came back for him four hours later to get him.</p>
<p>The woman’s red hair shinned under the sun and the glasses she was using framed her face like she was a goddess walking on earth, giving advice to young children that they would remember for years afterwards.</p>
<p>She had a child on her hip, a young brown headed boy that slept against her neck, and sometimes, Wade thought about searching for the woman just to thank her for everything, for that simple phrase in the parking lot of a supermarket and for the kindness she showed him.</p>
<p>He finished putting the food on the little plastic plate, serving himself some food too before turning around and seeing Ellie entertained by the living room of his apartment, playing with some of her dolls.</p>
<p>A few of them were from the family that took care of her for him while he was at work, and he was grateful for having them in his life.</p>
<p>He was always doing his best to make the almost-three-year-old girl’s life an easy one. He was always doing his best to not get fired from his job. He was always doing his best to not burn any bridges.</p>
<p>It scared him that maybe his head would betray him at any time, that the two voices he heard from time to time and the little things that weren’t really there would take his life and rip everything he constructed apart.</p>
<p>And there were also the scars. Other children were always scared of the scars that took his entire left arm and his left cheek with part of his scalp. He heard sometimes some parents commenting about it, how they wouldn’t let their children play with Ellie because of him.</p>
<p>It hurt, but he would always do his best.</p>
<p>“Hey, Ellie,” Wade said, kneeling besides the girl. She put her dolls down while he left both of the plates on the coffee table. “It’s time for you to eat something, duckling.”</p>
<p>She made grabby hand in his direction and he got her in his arms, going to the big chair near the counter and putting her there. He went back to the living room, grabbing both of the plates and putting the plastic one in front of the girl, pulling a plastic fork and giving to her</p>
<p>She scrunched her nose by the sight of the plastic fork, but started to eat her food anyway. He held on a laugh, grabbing a metal fork for himself and pulling a chair from the counter and sitting there to eat his food in their little silence until the little girl started to ramble about her little school friends.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p><i>“Life is hard, little rose,” the woman said, Pyotr directing his eyes to her.</i>

</p><p><i>“But you’re always doing your best, mom,” the little boy said, making the woman sigh.</i>

</p><p><i>“But it’s still hard.” She placed a hand over her grown belly, and Pyotr remembered looking at her with adoration when she told him what it was. He remembered. “Doing our best is always ideal, but things don’t get easy like that.”</i>






...</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Again, I'm sorry for the delay. This notes will be staying, but I'll change the text for when I finish my editting and decide it's time for the next bit of this story.</p>
<p>And again, I'm sorry, and hope everyone a good day, afternoon, night and evening.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading.</p><p>This story is still fresh in my mind since I literally threw away *cof cof* archived *cof cof* more than 20.000 words that I previously had on old takes I was trying on the whole Peter Parker was raised by Hydra think. The problem was that none of them brought as much anguish as I wanted so I just stopped them and re-started everything.</p><p>I'll do my best to keep updating.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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